When You Were Young

Dunno why I felt like writing this, but I did!

Here are the various sly and not so sly references and inside jokes I embedded in the first half of When You Were Young along with some random miscellaneous trivia. JustAShyDoge could do the same thing for the second half if he feels like it and when he gets a chance.

• Ralph's father (uses the VXA sprite of Eric) is named after the default protagonist from the RM2k-RM2k3 era, Alex. I wanted to have one generation of RTP protagonist be the literal father of the next. His last name, Zander, is a stupid joke on his first name (Alexander har har).
• Ulrika's mother is named Mrs. Jonsson because Ulrika Jonsson is a real (Swedish) person (and I confess the first thing that comes up when you Google 'Ulrika').
  
• Elmer is named after the purple haired thief character in the RMVX starting database because tragically there was no default character using the green haired guy's faceset, and because the unofficial name for him, "Greenie", isn't very name-y. But I wanted him to be named after an RTP thief: hence, Elmer. His personality and backstory by the way come from the description of the default VXA character Rick.
  
• Caroline's name is derived from Carol, the RM2k/2k3 character she is clearly based on/a continuation of.
  
• One of Caroline's epithets, Black Sorceress Ultimaetia, is a pretty obvious FF8 shout out. Ultimecia...Ultimaetia.
  
• Caroline's other epithet, "Graceful Nightmare", comes from the in-editor Nickname of the default RMVXA character Isabelle that I borrowed her backstory from.
  
• While obviously a reference to the crystals that are ubiquitous amongst Final Fantasy games and Final Fantasy-alikes, Crystallia is actually named after the hyper-expensive champagne that rappers like to randomly shout the name of, CRISTAL! While Crystallia is pronounced like you'd expect, King Crystall's name is pronounced like the name of the drink (the way rappers say it). That means that his name sounds nothing like King Crystal and might be phonetically rendered best as King Cristahl, with ALL the evidence on that last syllable. I have no idea why the crystal in the middle of Crystallia castle is important or what it does.
  
• King Crystall XIX is the 19th of his name because the number 19 is a recurring motif throughout my work. The number 19 is a recurring motif throughout my work because the number 19 is a recurring motif throughout Stephen King's work. The number 19 is a recurring motif throughout Stephen King's work because I don't know it started after the car crash the poor man was hit by a car let's let him have his idiosyncracies.
  
• Noah is the only character from VXA's default database that made it through into the game completely intact (as a major character, anyway). Nothing was changed about his name, class, skills, OR backstory (unless Doge made changes after the handoff).
  
• Angel the dog is a reference to Rinoa's canine "partner", Angelo, in FF8.
  
• Verdammt is just the German word for "damned". It works two ways, it can be melodramatic and ominous, i.e. "Empire of the Damned", or if you interpret it the other way, very funny, as any time they are referred to the speaker is saying "the damned Empire" the same way they might say "the Goddamned Empire" or "the stupid Empire" or "the fucking Empire". Inspiration for using this word came from the Orchestra Verdammt in Umbrella Academy Volume 1.
  
• Delamort comes very indirectly from the game Soul Blazer. When Soul Blazer was released in Japan, you were explicitly an agent of "God" and your ultimate enemy was "Satan". The American release bowdlerized this to "The Master" and "Deathtoll" respectively. I google translated Deathtoll into numerous languages in search of pleasing syllables, and found the French for "Count Of The Dead". The "of the dead" part, all crammed together into one word and with the French e on the end dropped, comes out Delamort.
  
• Port Wistful is inspired by the starting town in another Enix game, Illusion of Gaia in terms of layout, look, and feel.
  
• Noah's home, Mount Nanaki is named after Red XIII from FFVII as a nod to the fact that Noah is (as I think Libby pointed out in the stream) essentially Bugenhagen. Although all of his parallels with the Biblical Noah (he is gifted with knowledge, he tries to get people to listen to him, but he is ignored, then terrible things happen to the people who ignored him through no fault of his own but an outside agency, pretty much maps exactly to Noah and the Flood) complicate things, even though they were total accidents one and all.
  
• High Priest Starfield's name is an oblique reference to another moniker of Archeia_Nessiah whom I fangirl.
  
• "as foretold in the prophecies of Archeia" is a much less subtle reference to same.
  
• Except the few places where they were official, the names Maria (cameo), Cid, Trence (cameo), Satiel, and Halbarad (passing mention), and the names (and in some cases the essential characters) of Bennett, Terrence, Mira, Lark, Vera, Alice, and Noel all were found on Nessy's site.If not for this self-imposed limitation of matching RTP faces to the most official names I could find whenever possible, I never would have written a story with characters named Noah and Noel or Terrence and Trence because it's way too confusing.
  
• Obviously, or I think obviously, this game's focus was directed around the results of the "which RTP characters are your favorite" thread I made a month or whatever ago. Not many people voted but the most votes went to Caroline by a fair margin. Satiel's initial appearance in the game is because he also received a fair few votes.