You could argue that the actual villain, the main big bad of the story isn't a person itself.

It's a company.

The Shinra Electric Power Company.

Here's why I'm talking about this in relation to the writers of the game and it being something that they came up with in the mid-90s.

I want to talk a little bit about my rudimentary understanding of like late 20th century Japanese history.

So Japan, it's economically was sort of organized into a system that, uh, where everyone, you know, sort of labored under these things called the Zibatsu, which you're probably familiar with.

This is a fun piece of trivia about the world that people come across from time to time,

which is that like companies that make Japanese cars and shit now, like for example,

Mitsubishi have those names and their logos and things like that because before World War II,

they were what's called the Zibatsu,

which were largely hierarchical,

family-owned monopolistic houses and enterprises

that owned large sections of the economy.

So there's sort of like a feudal hangover.