In the GBC version of Breath of Fire, the Wyndian soldiers who temporarily join the party are finally given names. Although one of them, Enon, was apparently made up for the rerelease, the other two, Jiiku (which I usually render as "Sieg") and Rai, are references to the two Wyndian soldiers that starred in the "Princess of the Wings" manga, Sieg and Raifel.

In Breath of Fire IV, entire scenes were removed due to censorship. The most well-known of these (and the one I, oddly enough, didn't even notice ^^;) is the scene in which Fou-Lu beheads Emperor Soniel. This occurs during the scene where Fou-Lu finally meets Soniel, right after Soniel stabs him.

Another widely known one is the bath scene, though I don't know if most have a clear idea what goes on during it. It takes place when the party is marooned and Ryu, Nina, and Ursula are crossing a river on the way back from the fishing spot. Nina suddenly stops, commenting that she wants to take a bath, and Ryu ends up keeping watch (behind a rock, so he theoretically can't peek ^^) while she and Ursula bathe. Then, out of the blue, Nina makes an... interesting comment to Ursula, something along the lines of "Wow, I had no idea you were so big!" She doesn't clarify exactly what part of Ursula she's commenting on, but naturally this gets Ryu's attention. Ursula looks embarrassed and responds with something like "Well, excuse me for being big!" Then Ryu decides that he just has to see for himself and tries to peer around the rock, only to narrowly avoid having a bullet put through his brain courtesy of Ursula. Nina calls him a pervert. (*shakes head* And just whose fault does she think the whole situation is, anyway...?)

Another deleted scene, again dealing with Ursula, takes place at the docks after the girls have completed all the tasks set for them by the sailors. Zig tells Ursula that, as discipline is an important part of being a sailor, she has to be willing to submit to it, so she has to drop her pants and let him paddle her or something like that (hey, it's been a while, okay?). Of course, he doesn't really expect her to be able to do it, so when she actually does (no, pervs, you can't see anything...), he panics and immediately begs her to put her pants back on.

The only other deletion I noticed is a minor one, just a little bit of animation in one scene. It takes place at the checkpoint, when the party is trying to sneak through with Cray the fugitive. During the conversation after Cray tries to talk with the guards, Ursula suggests that they wait for nightfall and ambush the guards. Cray ignores her and tells Ryu to "restrain the madwoman" or something like that, and so Ryu sticks out his arm in front of her to do so but doesn't pay too much attention to where he puts said arm (or maybe he does... Maybe he's the pervert Ryu! ^^). At any rate, Ursula looks down, sees his hand on her chest, and turns and stares at him. Ryu eventually realizes that she's glaring (?) at him, looks over at exactly where he's touching her, and jumps away in shock. This all takes place while Cray is talking and not paying the least bit of attention to them. No dialogue was removed.

Interesting that all but one of the deleted scenes had something to do with Ursula in a possibly compromsing position... ^^; (Oh, and on a side note, the main series writer, Makoto Ikehara, knows all about the changes and mentioned them in an interview in the Breath of Fire IV artbook.)

Possibly the one thing that most disappointed and angered those who played Breath of Fire IV was Yuna. Or, more specifically, that he gets away scot free after everything he does. Some - actually, a lot - have theorized that this is part of the game's message, and Yuna is, in a sense, being given a second chance, just like all of humanity.

It's a nice thought, but the truth is, the staff just ran out of time. ^^; Originally, they had meant to include a scenario where Yuna is killed by Won-qu or strangled by Rhun, but just couldn't fit it in. Oh, well.

The makers of the Breath of Fire games are apparently fond of putting little in-jokes and bits of wordplay into the games. Here are a few examples:

In BoF II, there's the "Owlgernon" enemy. As you can probably guess, it should have been rendered as Algernon, as in the classic sci-fi novel Flowers for Algernon. A bit more difficult to figure out in the English version, though, are the names of the two enemies that appear alongside it, "Danielle" and "Suiky" (well, maybe not the former ^^;). In the original Japanese version, these two were called Daeruni and Suiki. Rearrange the syllables, and you get Danieru and Kiisu, the way that Daniel Keyes, the name of Flowers for Algernon's author, would be rendered in Japanese.

In BoF IV, the names of the children in Senesta's orphanage, when put together, spell out the phrase "Kono kotachi no namae tsunagatteru n da yoon," which roughly translates to... "I'm lining up these kids' names." ^^;

Also in BoF IV, the names of the monsters that Rasso summons can be put together to form "Joimekafuaito," which is a reference to a Famicom game that came out in 1993 called Joi Meka Faito, which translates to "Joy Mecha Fight" or maybe "Joi (short for join) Mecha Fight."

The creators also seem fond of either altering Japanese or English words or mashing together English and Japanese words to create spell names and such, at least as far as I can tell. I could just be imagining things, but it seems like a lot of things, like the Pabu-Pabu words, for instance, were thought up this way. The Pabu-Pabu word for west, for instance, is weshi. If you take the first part of the English word "west" and the last part of the Japanese word "nishi", that's what you get. Same with some other words, such as santo ("thank you" - sankyu (Japanese pronunciation of the English "thank you") plus arigato).