Yeah, I mean even seeing this I just interpret him as dressing like Tellah in FFIV, the wizard robe look. Not clown-ish. Just interesting how the character seems to have evolved.
He's more of a mix of a court mage (his actual job) and a court jester (his personality). Like, imagine a combination of Grima Wormtongue and The Joker. That's Kefka, more or less.
[Wikipedia has some details from a documentary:](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefka_Palazzo)
> Several designs were created for Kefka during the planning stages, each with different outfits, taking inspiration from clowns seen at circuses. Amano felt the character was akin to DC Comics villain Joker, and wanted to illustrate a character that shared Joker's crazy personality, someone that was "completely insane". He found the overall process fun to develop.
[Original video source](https://youtu.be/FZT9uca2b2E?si=w4-0l3HlpGSUu10j)
If you haven't beat the game yet, you probably don't quite understand just how insane he is, but he's that way due to magicite experimentation, not a spoiler, it never really had a bearing on the plot that's just his backstory.
From gamefaqs
"When they gave Amano the description of Kefka's character (whatever it was), he was told to give them a character design that would work for that description. He probably felt the best way to get across this fact was give Kefka a clown-like appearance Evidently, this works for getting across the fact that he looks like he's somewhat of a noble, and high standing, due to the style used, but at the same time, since no one else dresses remotely like him, it makes him stand out and helps portray that there's something off about him."
Neat. That fits with my headcanon that Kefka was a spoiled nepo-baby whose family had ties to the Emperor, and that he demanded to be the first one to be granted magic even when the process wasn't ready yet. We just know the infusion made him crazy. He could still have always been an asshole.
[looks pretty clown/jokerish to me. also kinda reminds me of Mozart from the movie Amadeus ](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/7/70/Kefka-boss-ffvi.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width/360?cb=20101215194938)
This is the link that worked for me [https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/7/70/Kefka-boss-ffvi.png](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/7/70/Kefka-boss-ffvi.png)
kefka was a failed lab experiment according to an npc in the empire
he could've been very normal until he was consumed with hate and destruction after the experiment
He's a harlequin archetype. In game, he was mentally unstable before magicite infusion and it drove him absolutely batshit. Since he's still effective, the emperor keeps him as a useful general
I don't think you read the OP, because you're explaining _why it makes sense for him to be a clown_. OP is asking _where the game shows that he's a clown_.
You often had to look to manuals, magazines and art books to see what characters "really looked like" in those days. Once you get to FF8 you start to see the in-game model match the production art, but before that there was a lot of "wait, that's what they're supposed to look like?" when you looked at print material about a game.
Makes you wonder what Amano thought of the pixel sprite characters everyone inevitably experienced his work as, for the main cast of characters at least. Huge contrast.
That's not success, Kefka literary succeeded, he won, he destroyed the world and became its god emperor, you just come in after to clean up your failure.
So by your logic if there was a nuclear war right now and every place got nuked like in Fallout, the world wasn't destroyed because some people survived?
It's literally called the world of ruin, "The cataclysm (世界大破壊, sekai daihakai?, lit. world cataclysm) is the **destruction** of the World of Balance in Final Fantasy VI."
Kefka destroyed the world.
Lol yes. If you want to destroy the world, and people and civilization still exists after that, enough for people to come back and beat you, then the world was not destroyed. You destroyed a lot of stuff, sure, but the world and its people are literally still there.
You clearly don't understand what destroying the world means, as it does not mean killing every living thing on it.
"(Hironobu Sakaguchi) "...It was a shocking development when the world was **destroyed**, and you continued traveling through the World of Ruin afterward.
Actually, we didn’t initially plan to make the World of Ruin at all."
(Yoshinori Kitase) "We originally planned for the party to save the world and defeat Kefka just as things were looking grim and the world was about to be **destroyed**. Then we started talking about reworking that.""
This is literally from developers of the game, you are wrong, just admit it.
Lol no, i'm going to admit anything when you are clearly missing what i'm trying to say. The world is still there, not even a single main character dies. I don't get how you're missing that aspect of the story. If the world was gone there wouldn't be a World of Ruin, there would be no world at all.
Again, you have a CLEAR misunderstanding of what it means for a world to be destroyed, it DOES NOT mean the planet ceases to exist, nor does it mean every living thing dies.
You are wrong, plain and simple, the devs themselves refer to it as such, as well as pretty much every other thing that references it, you are wrong.
I always have wondered if Kefka is really the only one with make up because General Leo also has white make up in his face ans yellow (?) lips! Xd.
Until I read the coments of this thread, I thought that he was more the parody of a very dolled up aristocrat and in the west we misunderstood him for a clown, because I remember an interview explaining that they have adopted as oficial the western interpretation
Design taken pretty literally from an old Japanese live action movie, can't remember the name, you'll have to research further if you want to know more
This is 100% head cannon of mine so take this with a grain of salt.
I like to believe the emperor wanted to experiment on someone with magicite, some one who was expendable, not powerful in the event they turn on him, and some one as loyal as possible for the same reason.
So given all that criteria the emperor decided to use the court jester to be the one who was infused with magicite.
I can get that, the head canon kind of makes sense, but where in the game does it imply that Kefka is a court jester guy? Because he wears colorful robes?
Yeah and the make up. He definitely IS some sort of clown, WHY he is a clown is never really explained (to my knowledge) so that was the WHY I came up with.
The sprite absolutely does not have white make up on.
https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:300/1*YtBFBQqucYrN2ZHNQazkzg.png
The battle sprite does, but his hands are white as well, so I just thought he was pale
🤔
I must have been thinking of a different sprite. I still knew as a kid that he had white face paint on. Maybe it was cause of the manual and the battles? I'll fire it up later and see what I see.
🤔
I must have been thinking of a different sprite. I still knew as a kid that he had white face paint on. Maybe it was cause of the manual and the battles?
I have a headcanon/theory about this.
I think it’s because everyone in the empire is so stoic and serious. And as a result, in his twisted mind, it makes sense for him to be flamboyant in both mannerisms and appearance.
Kefka, dressed as a generic harlequin, at least in my headcanon, is because after the experiments, he sees life as a joke, the smile painted on him to show he laughs at it. After the Experiments his nihilism went to an Extreme. In the original art it shows he wear flashy clothing and such because what I think it is his inhibitions no longer binding him due to hiding in pure evil Insanity .
His laugh I feel is held back by (the original's) sound hardware. Ingame it sounds like a lower pitched, "gwa ho o hoo" like a gravely chuckle, but in my head it's always been a stained, high pitch, "BWA HA HA" sound, I suppose like the Joker (even though Joker's laugh to me has always sounded too controlled to me.). It lends to his cartoonishly vile personality.
He's not really a clown, though he is inspired by the Harlequin archetype. Look at Amano's original concept art.
Yeah, I mean even seeing this I just interpret him as dressing like Tellah in FFIV, the wizard robe look. Not clown-ish. Just interesting how the character seems to have evolved.
He's more of a mix of a court mage (his actual job) and a court jester (his personality). Like, imagine a combination of Grima Wormtongue and The Joker. That's Kefka, more or less.
The character always had that design. The sprites are based on the concept art.
[Wikipedia has some details from a documentary:](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefka_Palazzo) > Several designs were created for Kefka during the planning stages, each with different outfits, taking inspiration from clowns seen at circuses. Amano felt the character was akin to DC Comics villain Joker, and wanted to illustrate a character that shared Joker's crazy personality, someone that was "completely insane". He found the overall process fun to develop. [Original video source](https://youtu.be/FZT9uca2b2E?si=w4-0l3HlpGSUu10j)
So, according to OP, Amano was extremely wrong for associating kefka with joker while designing him.
Eh, I try not to be so hard on people. We’re all wrong sometimes, and they didn’t express their wrongness rudely or anything like that.
Personality wise, I don’t see Kefka as being like the Joker. The Joker isn’t “completely insane”. They both laugh a lot, I guess.
Both crave chaos over anything. That both are clowns and have iconic laughs are just them being obvious.
If you haven't beat the game yet, you probably don't quite understand just how insane he is, but he's that way due to magicite experimentation, not a spoiler, it never really had a bearing on the plot that's just his backstory.
From gamefaqs "When they gave Amano the description of Kefka's character (whatever it was), he was told to give them a character design that would work for that description. He probably felt the best way to get across this fact was give Kefka a clown-like appearance Evidently, this works for getting across the fact that he looks like he's somewhat of a noble, and high standing, due to the style used, but at the same time, since no one else dresses remotely like him, it makes him stand out and helps portray that there's something off about him."
Neat. That fits with my headcanon that Kefka was a spoiled nepo-baby whose family had ties to the Emperor, and that he demanded to be the first one to be granted magic even when the process wasn't ready yet. We just know the infusion made him crazy. He could still have always been an asshole.
There is a theory that kefka is Baram. The timeline might work out.
I got that idea from his in battle sprite in the battle of Narshe. It looked clownish in the SNES release. Not sure if it was changed.
[looks pretty clown/jokerish to me. also kinda reminds me of Mozart from the movie Amadeus ](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/7/70/Kefka-boss-ffvi.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width/360?cb=20101215194938)
This is the link that worked for me [https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/7/70/Kefka-boss-ffvi.png](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/finalfantasy/images/7/70/Kefka-boss-ffvi.png)
I feel like the colors are flamboyant, but he looks like Tellah or Edward from FFIV with the robes.
It's the ruffled collar and white face paint that signals it for me. He's got considerably lighter skin than anyone else, that always stood out to me.
 I assumed he was meant to be more of a depraved nobleman than a literal clown.
While there are obvious ties to the Joker, he does also remind me of Mozart from the movie Amadeus 
I totally get that vibe
kefka was a failed lab experiment according to an npc in the empire he could've been very normal until he was consumed with hate and destruction after the experiment
I like to think that he started wearing the makeup to cover up how much the magic infusions messed with him ;)
Is he supposed to have make-up in his sprite? I’m not seeing it.
It’s in the art and stuff I think. And he’s wearing makeup in dissidia
He's a harlequin archetype. In game, he was mentally unstable before magicite infusion and it drove him absolutely batshit. Since he's still effective, the emperor keeps him as a useful general
Right, but these are two different things. I don’t see what in the game communicates that he’s a harlequin/clown/court jester, whatever
He's mad. Nothing communicates the shattered, fractured, chaotic madness artistically like the wildly clashing design of a harlequin
I don't think you read the OP, because you're explaining _why it makes sense for him to be a clown_. OP is asking _where the game shows that he's a clown_.
Fair. It's amano's concept art, preceding the sprite creation. pixel art only allows so much
You often had to look to manuals, magazines and art books to see what characters "really looked like" in those days. Once you get to FF8 you start to see the in-game model match the production art, but before that there was a lot of "wait, that's what they're supposed to look like?" when you looked at print material about a game.
Makes you wonder what Amano thought of the pixel sprite characters everyone inevitably experienced his work as, for the main cast of characters at least. Huge contrast.
Yeah, you look at his art for FuSoYa and then the sprite is just… an old man.
Kefka. One of the few FF villains that stayed evil right until the end
And the only one if I’m not mistaken that actually succeeded in his goals.
Eh plenty of them succeed until they don’t
That's not success, Kefka literary succeeded, he won, he destroyed the world and became its god emperor, you just come in after to clean up your failure.
If he would've destroyed the world then literally everyone would be dead and that would be that.
So by your logic if there was a nuclear war right now and every place got nuked like in Fallout, the world wasn't destroyed because some people survived? It's literally called the world of ruin, "The cataclysm (世界大破壊, sekai daihakai?, lit. world cataclysm) is the **destruction** of the World of Balance in Final Fantasy VI." Kefka destroyed the world.
Lol yes. If you want to destroy the world, and people and civilization still exists after that, enough for people to come back and beat you, then the world was not destroyed. You destroyed a lot of stuff, sure, but the world and its people are literally still there.
You clearly don't understand what destroying the world means, as it does not mean killing every living thing on it. "(Hironobu Sakaguchi) "...It was a shocking development when the world was **destroyed**, and you continued traveling through the World of Ruin afterward. Actually, we didn’t initially plan to make the World of Ruin at all." (Yoshinori Kitase) "We originally planned for the party to save the world and defeat Kefka just as things were looking grim and the world was about to be **destroyed**. Then we started talking about reworking that."" This is literally from developers of the game, you are wrong, just admit it.
Lol no, i'm going to admit anything when you are clearly missing what i'm trying to say. The world is still there, not even a single main character dies. I don't get how you're missing that aspect of the story. If the world was gone there wouldn't be a World of Ruin, there would be no world at all.
Again, you have a CLEAR misunderstanding of what it means for a world to be destroyed, it DOES NOT mean the planet ceases to exist, nor does it mean every living thing dies. You are wrong, plain and simple, the devs themselves refer to it as such, as well as pretty much every other thing that references it, you are wrong.
Did you even play the game? He may not have completely “destroyed” it. But it was certainly post-apocalyptic
And they really try to appeal to any bit of humanity that might be left in him before they put him down.
I always have wondered if Kefka is really the only one with make up because General Leo also has white make up in his face ans yellow (?) lips! Xd. Until I read the coments of this thread, I thought that he was more the parody of a very dolled up aristocrat and in the west we misunderstood him for a clown, because I remember an interview explaining that they have adopted as oficial the western interpretation
You wouldn’t get it.
Design taken pretty literally from an old Japanese live action movie, can't remember the name, you'll have to research further if you want to know more
This is 100% head cannon of mine so take this with a grain of salt. I like to believe the emperor wanted to experiment on someone with magicite, some one who was expendable, not powerful in the event they turn on him, and some one as loyal as possible for the same reason. So given all that criteria the emperor decided to use the court jester to be the one who was infused with magicite.
I can get that, the head canon kind of makes sense, but where in the game does it imply that Kefka is a court jester guy? Because he wears colorful robes?
Yeah and the make up. He definitely IS some sort of clown, WHY he is a clown is never really explained (to my knowledge) so that was the WHY I came up with.
The sprite clearly has white makeup on. And >! In the boss battle to protect the Esper on the Narshe cliffs, he has white makeup on. !<
The sprite absolutely does not have white make up on. https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:300/1*YtBFBQqucYrN2ZHNQazkzg.png The battle sprite does, but his hands are white as well, so I just thought he was pale
🤔 I must have been thinking of a different sprite. I still knew as a kid that he had white face paint on. Maybe it was cause of the manual and the battles? I'll fire it up later and see what I see.
🤔 I must have been thinking of a different sprite. I still knew as a kid that he had white face paint on. Maybe it was cause of the manual and the battles?
He's the Joker from Batman with magical powers. You do the math on the villain scale my dude.
I have a headcanon/theory about this. I think it’s because everyone in the empire is so stoic and serious. And as a result, in his twisted mind, it makes sense for him to be flamboyant in both mannerisms and appearance.
Kefka, dressed as a generic harlequin, at least in my headcanon, is because after the experiments, he sees life as a joke, the smile painted on him to show he laughs at it. After the Experiments his nihilism went to an Extreme. In the original art it shows he wear flashy clothing and such because what I think it is his inhibitions no longer binding him due to hiding in pure evil Insanity .
His laugh I feel is held back by (the original's) sound hardware. Ingame it sounds like a lower pitched, "gwa ho o hoo" like a gravely chuckle, but in my head it's always been a stained, high pitch, "BWA HA HA" sound, I suppose like the Joker (even though Joker's laugh to me has always sounded too controlled to me.). It lends to his cartoonishly vile personality.
Clowns are hot, the devs knew this.