TRIVIA
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    -In the grasslands sequence where Yuffie steals all your materia and ditches you, Red XIII uses one of Spaceman Spiff's favorite expressions-"Zounds!".
     -Sephiroth's sword is longer than he is tall- I'm guessing it's at least seven feet.  The first time this becomes apparent is in the flashback sequence in Kalm.  After that, any time you see his sprite walking with it, it's pretty clear how big it is.  Another big clue is that, in the Temple of the Ancients, when he's talking to your group by the Black Materia and he jams the sword into the ground-he puts a good bit of the tip into the ground ,and his hands are still above his eye level!  This is even more obvious in the final duel at the very end of the game, between Cloud and Sephiroth.
     -By the by, a note on that final duel-that sword is a heck of a lot scarier when you're looking at the pointy end.
     -Has anyone else noticed that, in the cutscene that shows him walking through the flames of Nibelheim as it burns, he's holding the sword in his left hand?  (And that, in the ads in gaming mags that show a screenshot from that cutscene, he's holding it in his right?)  If you watch through the game, he switches hands when he's holding it.  Oh, yeah, and he uses that monstrosity one-handed through most of the game.
        -The monster corresponding to Vincent's level 1 Limit Break, the Behemoth, lives under Midgar in the sewers; you'll met them when you go down there to shut off the Sister Ray.  The monster matching his level 2 Limit Break, the Gigas, lives up in the Whirlwind maze; you can also fight them in Battle Square.
     -A few unanswered questions: What happens to Lucrecia after the game is over?  What exactly was Jenova?  How many other members of Red XIII's race are there?  And finally, how did Shinra ever survive as a weapons manufacturer? (See list, Why It's Hard to Take Shinra Seriously)
     -At the beginning of Disc 2, when Barret, Cait, and Yuffie are escaping Port Junon, use the Sense materia to check out those fearsome warriors with the long, lance-type swords.  They'll come up as SOLDIER, 2nd Class.  Remember when you were running around attacking reactors, how Cloud said that if anyone from SOLDIER was there, they wouldn't have survived?  After seeing these guys, I agree with him.
     -In the Temple of the Ancients, when you're all crouching around the pool, you see Sephiroth pass behind the party.  If you look, when he walks behind you he's transparent, like the party is-which means he's actually standing behind you!
     -(Nit-Pick Alert!  Nit-Pick Alert!)  According to the instruction manual and Square's web site, Vincent is 27 years old.  According to in-game information, Sephiroth is only a few years older than Cloud.  According to Vincent's in-game backstory, he's old enough to be Sephiroth's father.  Unless he's half-Taelon, this just does not compute.  That figure only works if it's how old he was when he was locked in the crypt-i.e., apparent age rather than chronological age.  (I figure his chronological age somewhere around fifty; however, with his alterations, it's perfectly reasonable that he wouldn't show his age.)
     -OK, yet another note on SOLDIER.  It seems that not all of them go nuts; when you're climbing the Sister Ray at the end of Disc 2, besides those absurd-looking cannons, you might find some warriors who look an awful lot like the SOLDIER 2nd Class from Port Junon, except that they're wearing blue uniforms.  They're SOLDIER, 1rst Class.  (Compare their uniforms to what Cloud's wearing.)
     -It's pretty obvious that they took a few pages from Teutonic/Germanic mythology, what with the world being named Midgar.  But there's a less obvious note, on Nibelheim.  (Granted, the translation I first read, it was spelled Nifel-heim, although I've read translations where it's spelled Nivel-heim, or sometimes Nibelheim.)  According to Teutonic mythology, Nifel-heim was one of the first placed to exist, before even the world.  It was a spring that was surrounded by tall mountains.  From Nifel-heim flowed frost, fog, and fast-flowing cold waters that could never be quenched or exhausted.  Later on, after the various parts of the Teutonic world were created, it became the gateway to the Norse Nifel-hel, one of the lands of the dead, and not the one for the good souls.
     -Oh, yeah, on Teutonic mythology, the Odin summon isn't terribly accurate.  Alright, so they got the name of his spear, Gungnir, right.  However, the stag's horns belong to the Celtic Wild Hunt, not Odin; he normally wore a long-brimmed hat.  Also, Odin only had one eye-he gave his left eye to drink from the fountain of wisdom.  Sleipnir, his horse, had eight legs, not six; and he was often accompanied by two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, and two wolves, Freke and Gere.
     -Gast seems to appear everywhere.  He was well known around Cosmo Canyon, where he used to go to relax; in fact, Bugenhagen's observatory was a gift from Gast.  Vincent knew him, Aeris was his daughter, and he was Hojo's predecessor; he seemed to travel quite a bit.  He was also in charge of the project that led to Sephiroth.
     -If you've seen Star Wars, Biggs and Wedge will sound awful familiar: They were Luke's wing men in the first Death Star assault.
     -Anyone tried to read the inscription under Jenova's name in the picture of Jenova in the tank in the Nibelheim cutscene?  I've tried-excessive use of sharpening tools.  It's in Japanese.  Anyone who reads Japanese and is willing to give me a translation, please e-mail me and I'll give full credit with the translation.