Fiction is, in essence, distortions of reality, in service of conveying specific messages and narratives to an audience. It is little surprise then, that many works share tropes, ideas and even similar incidents. What is surprising, however, is when considerable similarities are found among works that look nothing alike.
And so, we come to our topic here. Frankly, I was quite surprised to discover this, as, despite To the Moon borrowing some trappings of a JRPG, it clearly tries to be something else entirely, with its focus on its melodramatic relationship drama between a man and his autistic wife...huh, does it really?
A commonly overlooked aspect of Johnny is his backstory. Specifically, the bit where he was jealous over his sibling, and then, post accidental fratricide, got brainwashed to act exactly like him, forever leaving his "true self" behind.
"But it isn't a major part of his story!" you might think. That's simply not true. The brainwashing was what made him forget about his promise to his beloved, River, in the first place. If it was merely to get him over his trauma, it wouldn't have involved forcefully blocking his memories and inculcating his brother's habits onto him, to the point of calling him by his brother's name.
In fact, Johnny not getting to live as himself is one of TtM's greatest tragedies, it just tends to get buried underneath the whole unfulfilled promise to his wife thing. Which is a pity, but I digress.
We now turn to Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy 7. Both the game and the character are quite popular, and need little introduction. However, much like Johnny, many major aspects of his character and his backstory tend to get overlooked.
Cloud, too, is jealous of someone else. That someone else isn't his sibling, yet he spends so much time close to him that he is influenced greatly by him anyway.
That someone is Zack.
He looks like this:
While the screenshot is not wholly clear, it's not hard to see a very distinct resemblance between the two. This is wholly intentional.
Long story short, Cloud faces a traumatic incident, which leads to him being subjected to mind altering medicine. Post medicine, he was forced by circumstances to pick up Zack's habits, which in turn ended up taking over his "true" personality for a long, long time...
Sounds familiar? It should, because this is, word by word, exactly the circumstances Johnny goes through. Nor are these mere happenstances - if anything, they are actually a big part of the overarching story, shaping up Cloud's character in a significant manner while also explaining the circumstances behind several of the game's major elements.
And that's not all. Much like Johnny, Cloud too, is an ordinary man hoping to become extraordinary, in this case by joining an elite squad of soldiers. Like Johnny, Cloud too forgets his moment of shining virtue thanks to his brainwashing, which, in turn, leads to a big gap in his memories, and a big mystery in the story.
This is not necessarily saying that Kan copied Final Fantasy 7, mind. Yet, the similarities are quite striking when laid side by side, and one is left wondering what this says about the storytelling of both games. Sometimes, fiction is fascinating in the ways it repeats itself, intentionally or otherwise.
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