The Hidden Detail In Final Fantasy That Took 13 Years To Find

Being RPGs, Final Fantasy entries inherently come with a ton of side quests and content for players to sink their teeth into. In fact, recent entries in the series, like Final Fantasy 15 and the remake of Final Fantasy 7, are packed to the brim with a ton of things to do in a large open world. Having all of this space and a long story campaign offers a ton of opportunities for players to discover hidden gems. In the age of the internet, most of these secrets can be found with a simple Google search. However, this wasn't the case for a handful of earlier entries in the Final Fantasy series. 

Final Fantasy 9 was released in 2000, meaning that any secrets or unlockables that were in the game were either hard to find on the internet, or weren't discovered at all. This meant that if a player wanted to uncover everything Final Fantasy 9 had to offer, they would have to buy the game's official strategy guide, which was infamous for being terribly written. However, as more online forums, FAQs, and walkthroughs slowly started to emerge over time, secrets that were once well-hidden were brought to the light by dedicated players — except for one.

There is one side-quest that somehow managed to evade even the savviest of Final Fantasy 9 fans. This quest was uncovered in 2013 by a player who reported their findings in a GameSpot forum post. In the post, the player explained that they were reading a Final Fantasy 9 edition of the franchise's Ultimania — a series of books that contain concept art and details about various Final Fantasy entries. In the book, the player learned of a quest in Final Fantasy IX involving the Neros, a family of pig-like humanoid creatures.

This quest asks the player to find the missing Nero family members. The player was required to return to the Nero family's home after slaying a certain story boss or reaching an important plot point. Each time, the player can return to find a new Nero family member waiting for them, requesting that they continue finding the others. After repeating the process several times, the player would be rewarded with a Protect Ring as a reward for finding every member of the family. The quest was quite extensive, completed near the end of the game, and demanded quite a lot from the player, which is probably why it flew under the radar for over a decade.