4 True Crimes That Somehow Involved The 'Final Fantasy' Games

4 The Katana Killer

Back in early 2000, a Spanish teen named José Rabadán used a samurai sword to murder both of his parents as well as his younger sister. He became known as the “Katana killer” in Spain, but international media immediately labeled him as the guy who killed his family because of Final Fantasy. The media claimed that the motive was Rabadán's need to be just like Squall, the protagonist of Final Fantasy VIII. Squall also uses a sword, yeah, but his sword looks nothing like the one used on the murder, and there's also the tiny fact that Squall never murders anyone with any sword throughout the entire game. FFVIII was one of the biggest games in the world at the time because people were either loving it or hating on it with fervor for marking a big departure from Final Fantasy VII. Was there ever any truth to this accusation, or was it just fantasy the media making use of the infamy that video games enjoyed at the time to sell more papers? We'll try to come to a surprising conclusion by the end of this piece, but before that, we have to talk about how weird it is that this was but one of many times that the Final Fantasy series has been blamed for grisly murders.

Whereas the international press mostly forgot about the case of the supposed Squall-wannabe murderer the moment after they threw Final Fantasy VIII under the bus, the people of Spain ended up discovering that the guy didn't even care for Final Fantasy VIII all that much as he ended up never even finishing the game. The professional doing his mental health assessment also concluded that the murder had nothing to do with games but rather with a rare case of epileptic psychosis – a moment of total confusion caused by his epilepsy that rendered Rabadán completely unaware of his actions. Is that weird? Yeah. Is it weirder than being inspired to commit murder by a PG-13 video game filled with cute giant chickens? Hardly. If we look at Rabadán's Spanish Wikipedia page, we won't see a single mention of Final Fantasy as a possible motivator – because that would be damn stupid. 

3 Sephiroth And Reno

Back in 2012, two german teenagers stabbed a couple to death and then kidnapped one of their friends. This could've gone down as one of a few instances when kids do terrible stuff because they're sick in their minds, but these two kids went by the aliases of "Sephiroth" and "Reno", two characters from Final Fantasy VII. Unlike FF8, FF7 wasn't just popular for a little over a year. It's an ever-popular game, which means it can probably turn all of our kids into murderers at any given time.

German authorities then also found a very damning exhibit that could likely prove motive. One of these kids, not even the two of them, had Final Fantasy 7 – one of the most common games of all time – installed on his PC. And that's all they really had, but it was more than enough to get the political officials of a country that already censored more video games than any other country in Europe to get even more riled up about it.

2 Rebecca Aylward didn't die because of Final Fantasy X

Rebecca Aylward was murdered by her boyfriend in 2011 when they were both just 15. He lured her to the woods and murdered her with a rock, something we're just gonna go ahead and say is not a weapon used by any character in any Final Fantasy game Ever.

The Sun, one of the worst newspapers in England the world, immediately showed Final Fantasy X fan art that the killer had previously drawn and featured testimonials calling it demonic. We wonder if they were blatantly trying to frame the game as a motivator for the crime.

The Sun later apologized to Aylward's family for numerous flubs in their awful coverage of the murder, but the apology failed to make any reference to the video game. The real motive? We don't know, but the murderer at some point said he did it because of a bet to win a free meal, so we're also just gonna bet that maybe he just isn't a very good and well-adjusted person.

1 A different murder in Germany that also had nothing to do with FF

Just one year after the “Sephiroth and Reno murders", Germany blamed another murder on Final Fantasy. This time, the killer was a Final Fantasy cosplayer who used a katana to stab a woman 18 times. That's it, that's the proof they needed to show the world that Final Fantasy was indeed turning kids into monsters. Just kidding. There are two big problems here. The first problem is how cosplay had already been a thing for a while before 2013, so it's unlikely that it would've taken so long for the evil murder spirits to transfer from the edgy clothes to the cosplayers. The second problem is perhaps even more interesting for this scenario because the killer wasn't even cosplaying a Final Fantasy character. He was cosplaying Neku Sakuraba, a character from The World Ends With You, a totally different game, one that's not even connected to Final Fantasy via Kingdom Hearts – and also one that also has nothing to do with samurai swords.

We just guess that blaming games for real-life violence is easier than addressing mental health issues, and blaming Final Fantasy is somehow even easier than blaming, say, games meant to get kids to join the army.

Top Image: Square Enix