Repository of Debunked Rumors

[Prism]

Y2K has become such an amorphous term to refer to that era, lol. At first I thought it just meant aesthetics like Jet Set Radio / goofy electronics like the Sidekick or VideoNow, but I guess it can refer to anything from that time, especially websites. It works and is a fun way to classify everything from that time! It is a minor miracle that Angelfire and Tripod are still up to this modern day, though the giant ads break sites' formatting a lot of the time...

Here's a list of totally true debunked rumors from the Super FFVII AngelFire site:

Cloud's 5th Limit:
This is 2 rumors in one. You are supposed to get the first 2 treasure chests in the crater, then go to Lucrecia's Cave. Make sure you have Vincent in your party. You will then fight a monster w/ 1 million hit points called Vincent's Soul. After you defeat him, you will get Cloud's 5th Limit.

8 Statues of Sephiroth:
This is the most annoying of them all. Supposedly, in order to get the Masamune blade to work, you need to find the 8 Statues of Sephiroth. Some people claim to have found one by doing a piano trick in Tifa's house.

White Materia
Supposedly, you are supposed to get the White materia by getting past the fish in the Forgotten City(which is impossible)and you will get it. It is the materia that revives Aeris.

Excalibur
Put 8 KotR on Cloud's Ultima Weapon and it will turn into the Excalibur. It does 15,000-20,000 damage. NOT TRUE! THIS IS THE RUMOR STAFF'S BIGGEST PROVE, TOOK AWHILE BUT WE BUSTED IT

Bring Aeris back
Another rumor about Aeris, By the time Aeris dies all your characters must be at level 99. If this happens Cloud will go mano a mano against Sephiroth. If you win Aeris lives.

Karsten the Ninja
If you have Yuffie in your party go to the same forest that you aqquired her in. Here Yuffie and Karsten will fight to see who is the Ultimate Ninja. Karsten is susposed to have an attack that steals all your items( she likes items over materia).

Fight the huge rainbow chocobo
This i know is not true because the person thought we all were stupied and put a picture of Choco/Mog summon.PIC OF SO CALLED RAINBOW CHOCOBO UPLOADED ONTO SITE



Alpha-Levithain
Take your silver chocboo and go underwater to the crater that Emmy sometimes floats over. Descend into the crater to fight Alpha-Levithain.
For this to work, you need a silver chocobo, but you know by now that that ain't happining.


Aeris as a prostitute
There was a small rumor which someone sent to me which said that if you named Aeris Easy, she would talk to you about prostitutes. Obviously, this is not true.
Aeris will not become a prostitute, no matter what you name her.

 

[Odysseus]

Y2K has become such an amorphous term to refer to that era, lol. At first I thought it just meant aesthetics like Jet Set Radio / goofy electronics like the Sidekick or VideoNow, but I guess it can refer to anything from that time, especially websites. It works and is a fun way to classify everything from that time! It is a minor miracle that Angelfire and Tripod are still up to this modern day, though the giant ads break sites' formatting a lot of the time...

For me it's that kind of ethereal time when people were first getting online in larger numbers, but the internet wasn't quite widespread yet. Like 1996-2002 I guess. A time when nonsense rumors like the ones you posted could get some genuine traction. The fact angelfire and tripod could die at any moment is why I'm trying to save some of this stuff now.

 

[Prism]

Indeed, and it's important to possibly push for an archival effort that goes beyond just Archive.org's resources. That way, there wouldn't be a risk of broken links or images with the possiblity of hand-done archiving...wonder what the best way to go about that would be.

 

[Odysseus]

Something more complete would be nice for sure. Seems like web crawlers back in the day didn't do a great job saving images, which means there's so many pieces of awful, beautiful garbage that have been lost forever.

I guess if anyone is curious, here's the sites I'm looking at now
https://web.archive.org/web/20000925163846/http://www.angelfire.com/tn/jenseverythingpage/#
(saved all the fanfics on that page, though many are missing or otherwise have a few chapters missing)
https://web.archive.org/web/20020111005649/http://www.vfiction.net/
(this one is long gone already, but there's some fun art scattered around.)

 

[Keveh Kins]

Oh man, some of those rumours take me right back to being a snot-nosed pre-teen.

I remember one where you were supposed to run back and forth between screens in...I think Nibelheim, then eventually an NPC would appear to sell you a key that you could use in the Shinra Mansion basement lab to release Zack from the big tube he was being kept in.

I wasted an entire day on that one.

Web design on most fan sites back then was pure retinal failure too, but I thought it looked so cool. Now me bleary adult eyes can barely cope with everything set to size 16 font.

I miss that whole era of internet, but especially miss that whole time as a fan of FF7 and that giddy excitement of discovering there was a whole community talking about this little game nobody else I knew liked.

And fanfic, god the fanfic! It was so cool! And then I started writing it and it really, really wasn't cool at all cause I sucked. But the joy was there

 

[Prism]

Oh man, some of those rumours take me right back to being a snot-nosed pre-teen.

That's one thing I think modern kids are missing out on - does this kind of absolute bullshit make its way around the schoolyard anymore? Especially with games as wide-open as Minecraft, you'd think they would, but it doesn't seem to have the same energy as these. It's funny being nostalgic over total disinformation
...But it made for a really active imagination, and made it even more special when one of these weird rumors actually DID turn out to be true.

Something more complete would be nice for sure. Seems like web crawlers back in the day didn't do a great job saving images, which means there's so many pieces of awful, beautiful garbage that have been lost forever.

I guess if anyone is curious, here's the sites I'm looking at now
https://web.archive.org/web/20000925163846/http://www.angelfire.com/tn/jenseverythingpage/#
(saved all the fanfics on that page, though many are missing or otherwise have a few chapters missing)
https://web.archive.org/web/20020111005649/http://www.vfiction.net/
(this one is long gone already, but there's some fun art scattered around.)

The first one's new to me. Oh man, I've been to that second one when web spelunking for more sites to add to the library I haven't updated in a year! Those are both really good sites, lol.
...Even down to the dated 9/11 era style ribbon banner that didn't age well in retrospect (really charming site, still)
Since web crawlers can only do so much, I wonder if literally going right click -> save page in a web browser of choice would work well enough. It'd be kept in the proper directory to maintain the website's links.

 

[waw]

Isn't there something about folks falsely believing all the monsters are Cetrans due to one of Ifalna's lines? I can't remember how this goes.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

I remember that one!

 

[Ite]

Isn't there something about folks falsely believing all the monsters are Cetrans due to one of Ifalna's lines? I can't remember how this goes.

Yeah essentially that’s the whole theory. The whole basis is this line:

Gast
Who is the person that appeared at the North Cave? I haven't any idea.

Ifalna
That's when the one who injured the Planet... or the 'crisis from the sky', as we call him, came.

She buries her face in her hands.

He first approached as a friend, deceived them, and finally...... gave them the virus.
The Cetra were attacked by the virus and went mad... transforming into monsters.

She drops to her knees.

Then, just as he had at the Knowlespole.
He approached other Cetra clans...... infecting them with... the virus...

Gast
You don't look well... Let's call it a day.

While this is the only evidence to support the theory, it’s only half the basis for the theory. In order to look for evidence, you need to actually think there’s a mystery to be solved. I posit that this is the dialogue that spawned the theory:

Tifa
......who would have ever thought the Mako Reactor held a secret like that.

Red XIII
That would seem to explain the increase in the number of monsters recently.

This is part of a larger kind of theme in Kalm where the game draws a connection between mako use and monsters (both in and out of Cloud’s tale). Seriously go to this page of Yinza and search the word “monster.” They mention the monsters in the Mythril mines, the green dragon you fight with Sephiroth, and then the makonoids and a Jenova connection. The writing is actually doing this to set us up for the “oh shit” moment with Cloud, but that Red XIII line directly draws our attention to the world map monsters.

So when Ifalna says that line about the “virus” and the ancients, it is understandable that some mystery enthusiasts might conclude a) Jenova activity = world map monsters b) Jenova + Ancients happened long ago. Therefore… all present day monsters were once ancients!

It’s kind of a dumb conclusion IMO, makes the world seem small and nonsensical. Those 100 or so monsters are better spent playing into the themes of life, nature, and cycles (even if you interact with them by killing them ? ). Although, I can’t even say it’s a ridiculous theory, because literally Final Fantasy VIII is like “all monsters in this game came from the moon 50 years ago.” Soooo yeah, it’s a sensible enough FF theory I suppose, but I think it’s a case of “game purposefully tweaked your mystery whiskers, and you misdirected yourself.”

 

[waw]

That's a work of art. I think this was one stuck because Ifalna's story was the "oldest" mention of a monster origin. Then again, I guess folks should play FFX to see even earlier monsters? XD

 

[Odysseus]

The first one's new to me. Oh man, I've been to that second one when web spelunking for more sites to add to the library I haven't updated in a year! Those are both really good sites, lol.

Have you been here before?
https://web.archive.org/web/20001030185125/http://www.crosswinds.net/~rockettown/main.html
That's how I found Jen's page. Admittedly I only clicked it because the guy on rocket town was roleplaying Cid, and the name "Jen" in conjunction with that brought a certain thing to mind, but there's actually a lot of good links on there in the "Flight School" tab.

 

[Prism]

Have you been here before?
https://web.archive.org/web/20001030185125/http://www.crosswinds.net/~rockettown/main.html
That's how I found Jen's page. Admittedly I only clicked it because the guy on rocket town was roleplaying Cid, and the name "Jen" in conjunction with that brought a certain thing to mind, but there's actually a lot of good links on there in the "Flight School" tab.

I haven’t been to that iteration of the site, but another version of Rockettown was in the old archive thread here. It found by my brother based on a tip from Jairus of all people.

I’m grateful for all of the links sections in these old days. They make it easy to go down rabbit holes very quickly.

 

[Odysseus]

I haven’t been to that iteration of the site, but another version of Rockettown was in the old archive thread here. It found by my brother based on a tip from Jairus of all people.

I’m grateful for all of the links sections in these old days. They make it easy to go down rabbit holes very quickly.

I noticed there were newer and more complete iterations of it further in the timeline after posting that lol. Jairus told your brother about it?

My holy grail right now is finding a certain Zack tribute site, just because I don't think anyone has ever verified if it actually exists lol.

 

[Prism]

I noticed there were newer and more complete iterations of it further in the timeline after posting that lol. Jairus told your brother about it?

My holy grail right now is finding a certain Zack tribute site, just because I don't think anyone has ever verified if it actually exists lol.

Back in 2020 in the archive thread, Jairus mentioned a site he used to go on and I was trying to find it. My brother also does this kind of archive thing (he’s on Render96’s team), so I mentioned it to him IRL and he found it from there.

What Zack site do you have in mind?

 

[Odysseus]

Back in 2020 in the archive thread, Jairus mentioned a site he used to go on and I was trying to find it. My brother also does this kind of archive thing (he’s on Render96’s team), so I mentioned it to him IRL and he found it from there.

What Zack site do you have in mind?

The guy who originally posted the whole FF7 House thing online supposedly had a dedicated Zack site back in the day. I have yet to find any Zack sites though.

Maybe this whole conversation should get moved to your other thread...