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During my Kingdom Hearts Retrospective, I've repeatedly mentioned that I see a great number of connections between Kingdom Hearts and one Final Fantasy game in particular: the original Final Fantasy III, released on the Famicom in 1990 (and not to be confused with FFVI, which was released in North America under the label "Final Fantasy III" prior to the release of FFVII). However, recently I'd come to wonder about my claim and decided to put it under the microscope to see if it really did hold up.
To do this, we're going to run through the plot of FFIII, looking for connections. I'll point out any connections I find and anything else that's required to make sense of later developments in FFIII.
The first thing to establish about FFIII is that it has two major versions: the Famicom release and the remake, which covers all releases from the Nintendo DS 2006 release onwards, including the Steam PC release. This positions the remake just between the release of KH2 and KH2:FM+ / Re: Chain of Memories in Japan. This means that if the FFIII remake added anything that it has in common with KH1, CoM or KH2, it would actually be FFIII making a reference to Kingdom Hearts rather than the other way around!
One thing that's going to make this tricky is that there doesn't seem to be a complete script online for either version of the game. This means I'm going to have to link videos, and hope the player just so happens to talk to the right NPCs. For my sources, I'll be linking to a longplay of the Famicom version by Valis77, and a Let's Play of the remake by MasterKD.
FFIII begins by introducing your party. This happens in wildly different ways based on version, but as neither introduction arc has much in common with KH, we'll skip them. All that really matters is that the party is eventually dubbed the "Warriors of Light" by one of four elementally themed Crystals, as you so often see in the early Final Fantasies. After the party starts out, you encounter the first of a familiar sight for Kingdom Hearts fans: a town whose occupants have been transformed by dark magic. In this case, they've been turned into strange, two-dimensional outlines, only a distant relation to the Heartless, but I figured I'd mention it while we're here. Among the walking TV crime scene rejects, they meet this game's Cid, Cid Haze, whom we'll be talking about later. Not long after, they meet up with a young man named Desch.
The narrative picks up when the FFIII player discovers that they are actually in a place that's just part of the wider world: an island floating in the sky (here we see Valis circuit the continent on a chocobo as part of a side-quest). Like in KH1, what appears to be a traditional RPG "small hometown in the corner of nowhere that is dragged into the larger conflict" turns out to be something a great deal more fantastical: a floating island in the air in FFIII, and a floating island in space in KH1. We're still not on the hard connections, but we're getting a little closer.
We also begin to learn something about FFIII's backstory: the current world, and the Floating Continent especially, are the product of a fallen kingdom from the past. Over time (with more front-loaded evidence in the remake), we learn about these "Ancients." Like KH1, the world of FFIII started as a unified kingdom of Light before being split apart. The Kingdom of Light became an overwhelming monopoly, and it's implied that things went bad as a consequence of this monopoly, eventually bringing down the kingdom! Comparisons could be made to either the unified Kingdom Hearts world prior to the apocalypse (aka, the world of KHX), or to the goodly Keyblade order that lived at the Land of Departure. Unlike Kingdom Hearts per se, it's implied that a group of Warriors of Darkness were summoned to destroy the kingdom of light to prevent the end of the world! (Linked scene is from near the end of the game)
We see our first direct and unambiguous connection between FFIII and KH at the top of the Tower of Owen. There, the party meets an underling of the big bad, someone named "Xande," who has come to cast the Floating Continent to the ground by destroying its magic… or in other words, as we'll see in a few paragraphs, to cast the island into darkness. To protect the island, the party defeats the boss, and Desch leaves the party to repair the Tower of Owen's furnace. However, he does so in an overdramatic fashion, by hurling himself into the Tower of Owen's furnace! Naturally, he's later revealed to be alive, since the idea that he somehow fixed things by incinerating himself is absurd, but we're talking within the game's final hour! This scene appears to have been the direct inspiration for a certain scene in KH2: Tron's actions and fake-out death (longplay by Spazbo4) at the end of the second trip to Space Paranoids.
After some more plots unconnected to our comparison (they do happen to contain a man who turns into a dragon, but that goes way further back in literature than even Disney's version of Maleficent). At the end of this arc, we receive an item that allows Cid to upgrade our sailing ship into an airship, when the remake suddenly makes a large swerve not present in the original game, and one that definitely seems to be a reference to KH instead of the other way around. In the FFIII remake, Cid begins to refer to the rest of the planet (below the Floating Continent) as "our own world," and drops the bombshell that he and the player characters are actually from the surface. The word "world" (used here in such a manner that both the surface and the Floating Continent are called "worlds," in that sometimes misleading, one-size-fits-all manner we're familiar with from KH) seems like a deliberate KH reference, but it gets better, as Cid mentions how they escaped a literal wave of darkness that overtook the surface. "I don't know what happened to our world after the darkness came," sounds right out of KH.
The party members do not remember these events because they were children at the time. This connection becomes all the more obvious once you realize this isn't just a generic KH reference, but a direct reference to the actions of Cid Highwind in Kingdom Hearts, who flew the other Final Fantasy cast members (Leon, Aerith, Yuffie) away from Maleficent's dark takeover of Hollow Bastion when they were just kids. The KH-incarnations of these FF characters were older than the FFIII characters at the time (old enough that Leon holds his failure to defend the town against himself), but were still largely children at the time.
Heading down to the surface world, the FFIII party discovers the horrible darkness Cid described in his story, a vision of a world already swallowed by the darkness. In Kingdom Hearts, worlds swallowed by the darkness are absorbed into the Realm of Darkness, so we do not have a strict comparison here, but a frightening visual like this would not be out of place in the series in some other context. In the Famicom version, the world is instead consumed by magical water caused by the damaged Water Crystal.
The party restores the surface and also retrieves their airship through a series of misadventures, eventually bringing them to the city of Saronia, which is in a state of civil war. This war has been orchestrated by the king's advisor, secretly a monster by the name of Garuda. At the climax, Garuda takes control of the king's mind in an attempt to kill the king's son, but the king kills himself instead. While it would be several degrees removed, one could make the comparison between this scene and Xehanort's manipulating Terra to fight Eraqus, as both feature a mastermind compelling father and son to fight, resulting in the death of the father.
After the events in Saronia, Alus gifts the party with a new airship. While not a direct connection, it's worth noting that FFIII is the first game in the series to expand the concept of the airship to the multi-capable vehicles of today, which would later inspire KH's Gummi Ship.
Using their new airship, the party travels to the home of Doga, an archmage, and Final Fantasy fans in Japan have their first encounters with Final Fantasy's now-iconic Moogles. Doga tells the party that the mysterious "Xande" mentioned several times at this point was once a fellow apprentice with Doga and another future archmage, Unei. They served under the Grand Magus Noah, who willed them each a gift upon his death: Doga got mastery of magic, Unei got mastery of "the world of dream," and Xande was given the gift of mortality. Doga credits Xande with most of the evil that has happened in the game so far. Xande's motivation in drowning the world to darkness is simply a boring old power-boosting act of evil in the Famicom release, but in the remake, he aims to do it to avoid his mortal fate. Xande's attempts to escape his own death through the power of darkness could be seen as inspiring Xehanort's quest to live on past the end of the world. While Xehanort's version of the plot is better refined than Xande's, both key elements (the embrace of darkness and the consequences of mortality) remain in place. I can't claim to have worked this connection out all on my own, since the inspiration came from Eamonn in a comment on my Kingdom Hearts Retrospective.
The idea of Doga's compatriot, Unei, having control over the "world of dream," may have also inspired elements in Kingdom Hearts. While we don't explore the world of dream during the events of FFIIII, the name alone could be seen as a connection to the Realm of Sleep from DDD. Unei's only uses of her power over the world of dream are 1) to speak to others in their sleep (and even that is only in the remake, to correct a lack of direction in the Famicom game's second act), and 2) to obliterate a rock by striking it with its counterpart in the world of dream. This implies the world of dream is not unlike a realm of antimatter to the real-world's realm of matter. This seems in contrast to the Realm of Sleep in DDD, but as we've rarely seen any interaction between the Realm of Sleep and the other Realms of the KH universe, this is hard to say… but still unlikely, in my opinion.
Nothing that occurs in FFIII from Unei's rock-smashing to the two-part final dungeon have any counterpart to Kingdom Hearts (or at least not so far). The final dungeon pair starts in the Crystal Tower, an edifice created by the previously mentioned kingdom of Light. Here, Xande inflicts the party with "The Curse of the Five Wyrms," freezing them in place and, in the Famicom version, the curse is presumably going to kill them as well (you might not believe me, but this change seems less like censorship and more like the DS version couldn't be arsed to animate the nearby dragon statues). They are rescued when Doga manages to round up five volunteers who have made strong connections with the party members earlier in the game. Final Fantasy has never before, and rarely since, had such an overt moment where the party is all but explicitly saved by the power of friendship, Kingdom Heart's bread and butter. Better yet, this section also features the term "hearts of Pure Light," which of course appears in Kingdom Hearts in the form of the chosen 7 Princesses of Light rather than the chosen 5 friends of light. And I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that one of the pure hearted characters is a princess!
For a major Final Fantasy antagonist, Xande doesn't have much to monologue about, and is soon defeated, only for the series to pull its favourite plot twist and reveal that he wasn't the true final boss after all. At this moment, Xande reveals that the darkness he's been channeling has manifested its own will as the "Cloud of Darkness," and will destroy the world on its own. Indeed, in just a few dialogues the game will explain that the Cloud corrupted Xande with its overwhelming Darkness to do its bidding, now a staple plot element for Kingdom Hearts. The Cloud appears and speaks, saying it aims to destroy both light and darkness in favour of "the Void," which is nothingness. The game will later explain that the Void exists where Light and Dark meet, just like the Realm of Nothingness in KH2. The concept of the Void would later be expanded on in FFV, but we can see the seeds of the idea of "nothingness" from KH2 and beyond in these Final Fantasy titles.
After nearly being killed, the party is revived by the sacrifice of Doga and Unei (actually their second sacrifice, but that's neither here nor there). At this point, the party decides to put an end to the Cloud of Darkness in its home turf: the World of Darkness. The comparison to the Realm of Darkness in Kingdom Hearts should be self-evident, but it was made even more so in the remake where the World of Darkness now appears in the Kingdom Hearts fashion, as a series of platforms (crystalline, in this case) over the black void. Here, the party encounters four Crystals of Darkness, one of each element, just like the Crystals of Fire, Water, Earth and Air they encountered in their own world. This implies that the World of Darkness is an equal world to the one of light, operating under similar root principles, just like the Realms of Light and Darkness in Kingdom Hearts. FFIII goes further than we've yet seen in KH, suggesting that each are capable of overwhelming the other, but that doing so will bring the Cloud of Darkness to return both worlds to the Void if this happens.
As the party encounters the Crystals of Darkness, the party ends up teaming up with the spirits of the Warriors of Dark. These Warriors were the one who overthrew the Kingdom of Light in the deep past, and were also attacked by the all-consuming Cloud of Darkness in the end. One of the warriors tells you about how not giving up hope is more important than anything else, definitely something out of Sora's wheelhouse and it's not the last we'll be hearing of it. In both versions (but especially the remake, which jazzes up a speech that was otherwise empty) the Warriors of Dark emphasize balance as superior to light or dark supremacy, something that Kingdom Hearts has flirted with quite frequently since CoM, though it has yet to embrace it to FFIII's degree.
On the subject of the Warriors of Darkness, we might question whether or not there are KH characters out there cast in their likeness. This is up in the air, depending on your thoughts on the ancient kingdom of Light that the Warriors of Dark overthrew. If you see it as having evolved into the golden age world of Kingdom Hearts before the apocalypse, then no, we have not yet seen any "Warriors of Darkness" responsible for that downfall join up with the heroes of the present. I suppose the plots of KHUX and KH3 might yet make such a connection? If you instead see the kingdom of light as having developed into the Land of Departure, then Terra, Aqua and Ventus could instead be seen as the Warriors of Darkness in this comparison.
The party finally faces off against the Cloud of Darkness, which they were not able to harm in their previous encounter. She tells them that she cannot be harmed by light alone (for some reason she accredits this to her being in the World of Darkness, but this is demonstrably untrue given that she was invincible in the World of Light during your first battle), and the Warriors of Dark sacrifice their spirits to rectify this. We already know how the protagonists in Kingdom Hearts are made up of light wielders and at least one dark wielder, Riku, and the idea of this relationship being deliberate and intentional goes back to CoM. This is old news for us but nevertheless has its roots in FFIII. This apparently severs her connection to the Dark Crystals, so she resolves to use the Warriors of Light as her source of power instead. They battle, and of course the heroes are victorious.
FFIII is ultimately more fatalist than KH, saying that eventually the Void will overtake both the Realms of Darkness and Light, but it proclaims that today is not that day. The game ends with a plea for the player to find hope in dark times and then scenes of the FFIII party meeting up with certain familiar faces.
Conclusions and Theories
All-considered, FFIII's connections to Kingdom Hearts are not substantial for most of its length (prior to the final dungeon), no more than might be expected from any other entry in the Final Fantasy series in comparison to Kingdom Hearts. I've pointed out anything that could be considered a comparison, but I'm not sure how strongly I feel about most of them. It is arguably more notable how much the FFIII remake borrows from KH rather than the other way around! However, FFIII's final hours, and the game's stance on light, darkness and hope, seem to be very much in line with Kingdom Hearts' philosophy, and those come from the original.
In my opinion, any theorist trying to look to FFIII for clues about future events in Kingdom Hearts would do best to look to those final hours. Most of the connections and quasi-connections from the mid-game have already played out in full in Kingdom Hearts, with the possible exceptions of the destructive kingdom of light (since it is so intertwined with FFIII and KH's philosophy of light and dark) and the matter of Xehanort and Xande (which hovers so close to the heavily connected final hours that it might be unwise to dismiss it out of hand). We may yet find a destructive kingdom of light right in front of our eyes, might learn even more about the importance of balance between light and dark and the fundamental interrelations between the two, and may yet even see Xehanort suffering the effects of the all-corrupting darkness.
I know that I, personally, would be disappointed to see KH3 come and go without sight or sound of the Cloud of Darkness, even if it be in an unrelated role to these theories (say, as an independent force, or an ally of Maleficent). She would also make an excellent central antagonist for a later, post-KH3 game.
That's all I have to say on the matter. What do the rest of you think?
To do this, we're going to run through the plot of FFIII, looking for connections. I'll point out any connections I find and anything else that's required to make sense of later developments in FFIII.
The first thing to establish about FFIII is that it has two major versions: the Famicom release and the remake, which covers all releases from the Nintendo DS 2006 release onwards, including the Steam PC release. This positions the remake just between the release of KH2 and KH2:FM+ / Re: Chain of Memories in Japan. This means that if the FFIII remake added anything that it has in common with KH1, CoM or KH2, it would actually be FFIII making a reference to Kingdom Hearts rather than the other way around!
One thing that's going to make this tricky is that there doesn't seem to be a complete script online for either version of the game. This means I'm going to have to link videos, and hope the player just so happens to talk to the right NPCs. For my sources, I'll be linking to a longplay of the Famicom version by Valis77, and a Let's Play of the remake by MasterKD.
FFIII begins by introducing your party. This happens in wildly different ways based on version, but as neither introduction arc has much in common with KH, we'll skip them. All that really matters is that the party is eventually dubbed the "Warriors of Light" by one of four elementally themed Crystals, as you so often see in the early Final Fantasies. After the party starts out, you encounter the first of a familiar sight for Kingdom Hearts fans: a town whose occupants have been transformed by dark magic. In this case, they've been turned into strange, two-dimensional outlines, only a distant relation to the Heartless, but I figured I'd mention it while we're here. Among the walking TV crime scene rejects, they meet this game's Cid, Cid Haze, whom we'll be talking about later. Not long after, they meet up with a young man named Desch.
The narrative picks up when the FFIII player discovers that they are actually in a place that's just part of the wider world: an island floating in the sky (here we see Valis circuit the continent on a chocobo as part of a side-quest). Like in KH1, what appears to be a traditional RPG "small hometown in the corner of nowhere that is dragged into the larger conflict" turns out to be something a great deal more fantastical: a floating island in the air in FFIII, and a floating island in space in KH1. We're still not on the hard connections, but we're getting a little closer.
We also begin to learn something about FFIII's backstory: the current world, and the Floating Continent especially, are the product of a fallen kingdom from the past. Over time (with more front-loaded evidence in the remake), we learn about these "Ancients." Like KH1, the world of FFIII started as a unified kingdom of Light before being split apart. The Kingdom of Light became an overwhelming monopoly, and it's implied that things went bad as a consequence of this monopoly, eventually bringing down the kingdom! Comparisons could be made to either the unified Kingdom Hearts world prior to the apocalypse (aka, the world of KHX), or to the goodly Keyblade order that lived at the Land of Departure. Unlike Kingdom Hearts per se, it's implied that a group of Warriors of Darkness were summoned to destroy the kingdom of light to prevent the end of the world! (Linked scene is from near the end of the game)
We see our first direct and unambiguous connection between FFIII and KH at the top of the Tower of Owen. There, the party meets an underling of the big bad, someone named "Xande," who has come to cast the Floating Continent to the ground by destroying its magic… or in other words, as we'll see in a few paragraphs, to cast the island into darkness. To protect the island, the party defeats the boss, and Desch leaves the party to repair the Tower of Owen's furnace. However, he does so in an overdramatic fashion, by hurling himself into the Tower of Owen's furnace! Naturally, he's later revealed to be alive, since the idea that he somehow fixed things by incinerating himself is absurd, but we're talking within the game's final hour! This scene appears to have been the direct inspiration for a certain scene in KH2: Tron's actions and fake-out death (longplay by Spazbo4) at the end of the second trip to Space Paranoids.
After some more plots unconnected to our comparison (they do happen to contain a man who turns into a dragon, but that goes way further back in literature than even Disney's version of Maleficent). At the end of this arc, we receive an item that allows Cid to upgrade our sailing ship into an airship, when the remake suddenly makes a large swerve not present in the original game, and one that definitely seems to be a reference to KH instead of the other way around. In the FFIII remake, Cid begins to refer to the rest of the planet (below the Floating Continent) as "our own world," and drops the bombshell that he and the player characters are actually from the surface. The word "world" (used here in such a manner that both the surface and the Floating Continent are called "worlds," in that sometimes misleading, one-size-fits-all manner we're familiar with from KH) seems like a deliberate KH reference, but it gets better, as Cid mentions how they escaped a literal wave of darkness that overtook the surface. "I don't know what happened to our world after the darkness came," sounds right out of KH.
The party members do not remember these events because they were children at the time. This connection becomes all the more obvious once you realize this isn't just a generic KH reference, but a direct reference to the actions of Cid Highwind in Kingdom Hearts, who flew the other Final Fantasy cast members (Leon, Aerith, Yuffie) away from Maleficent's dark takeover of Hollow Bastion when they were just kids. The KH-incarnations of these FF characters were older than the FFIII characters at the time (old enough that Leon holds his failure to defend the town against himself), but were still largely children at the time.
Heading down to the surface world, the FFIII party discovers the horrible darkness Cid described in his story, a vision of a world already swallowed by the darkness. In Kingdom Hearts, worlds swallowed by the darkness are absorbed into the Realm of Darkness, so we do not have a strict comparison here, but a frightening visual like this would not be out of place in the series in some other context. In the Famicom version, the world is instead consumed by magical water caused by the damaged Water Crystal.
The party restores the surface and also retrieves their airship through a series of misadventures, eventually bringing them to the city of Saronia, which is in a state of civil war. This war has been orchestrated by the king's advisor, secretly a monster by the name of Garuda. At the climax, Garuda takes control of the king's mind in an attempt to kill the king's son, but the king kills himself instead. While it would be several degrees removed, one could make the comparison between this scene and Xehanort's manipulating Terra to fight Eraqus, as both feature a mastermind compelling father and son to fight, resulting in the death of the father.
After the events in Saronia, Alus gifts the party with a new airship. While not a direct connection, it's worth noting that FFIII is the first game in the series to expand the concept of the airship to the multi-capable vehicles of today, which would later inspire KH's Gummi Ship.
Using their new airship, the party travels to the home of Doga, an archmage, and Final Fantasy fans in Japan have their first encounters with Final Fantasy's now-iconic Moogles. Doga tells the party that the mysterious "Xande" mentioned several times at this point was once a fellow apprentice with Doga and another future archmage, Unei. They served under the Grand Magus Noah, who willed them each a gift upon his death: Doga got mastery of magic, Unei got mastery of "the world of dream," and Xande was given the gift of mortality. Doga credits Xande with most of the evil that has happened in the game so far. Xande's motivation in drowning the world to darkness is simply a boring old power-boosting act of evil in the Famicom release, but in the remake, he aims to do it to avoid his mortal fate. Xande's attempts to escape his own death through the power of darkness could be seen as inspiring Xehanort's quest to live on past the end of the world. While Xehanort's version of the plot is better refined than Xande's, both key elements (the embrace of darkness and the consequences of mortality) remain in place. I can't claim to have worked this connection out all on my own, since the inspiration came from Eamonn in a comment on my Kingdom Hearts Retrospective.
The idea of Doga's compatriot, Unei, having control over the "world of dream," may have also inspired elements in Kingdom Hearts. While we don't explore the world of dream during the events of FFIIII, the name alone could be seen as a connection to the Realm of Sleep from DDD. Unei's only uses of her power over the world of dream are 1) to speak to others in their sleep (and even that is only in the remake, to correct a lack of direction in the Famicom game's second act), and 2) to obliterate a rock by striking it with its counterpart in the world of dream. This implies the world of dream is not unlike a realm of antimatter to the real-world's realm of matter. This seems in contrast to the Realm of Sleep in DDD, but as we've rarely seen any interaction between the Realm of Sleep and the other Realms of the KH universe, this is hard to say… but still unlikely, in my opinion.
Nothing that occurs in FFIII from Unei's rock-smashing to the two-part final dungeon have any counterpart to Kingdom Hearts (or at least not so far). The final dungeon pair starts in the Crystal Tower, an edifice created by the previously mentioned kingdom of Light. Here, Xande inflicts the party with "The Curse of the Five Wyrms," freezing them in place and, in the Famicom version, the curse is presumably going to kill them as well (you might not believe me, but this change seems less like censorship and more like the DS version couldn't be arsed to animate the nearby dragon statues). They are rescued when Doga manages to round up five volunteers who have made strong connections with the party members earlier in the game. Final Fantasy has never before, and rarely since, had such an overt moment where the party is all but explicitly saved by the power of friendship, Kingdom Heart's bread and butter. Better yet, this section also features the term "hearts of Pure Light," which of course appears in Kingdom Hearts in the form of the chosen 7 Princesses of Light rather than the chosen 5 friends of light. And I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that one of the pure hearted characters is a princess!
For a major Final Fantasy antagonist, Xande doesn't have much to monologue about, and is soon defeated, only for the series to pull its favourite plot twist and reveal that he wasn't the true final boss after all. At this moment, Xande reveals that the darkness he's been channeling has manifested its own will as the "Cloud of Darkness," and will destroy the world on its own. Indeed, in just a few dialogues the game will explain that the Cloud corrupted Xande with its overwhelming Darkness to do its bidding, now a staple plot element for Kingdom Hearts. The Cloud appears and speaks, saying it aims to destroy both light and darkness in favour of "the Void," which is nothingness. The game will later explain that the Void exists where Light and Dark meet, just like the Realm of Nothingness in KH2. The concept of the Void would later be expanded on in FFV, but we can see the seeds of the idea of "nothingness" from KH2 and beyond in these Final Fantasy titles.
After nearly being killed, the party is revived by the sacrifice of Doga and Unei (actually their second sacrifice, but that's neither here nor there). At this point, the party decides to put an end to the Cloud of Darkness in its home turf: the World of Darkness. The comparison to the Realm of Darkness in Kingdom Hearts should be self-evident, but it was made even more so in the remake where the World of Darkness now appears in the Kingdom Hearts fashion, as a series of platforms (crystalline, in this case) over the black void. Here, the party encounters four Crystals of Darkness, one of each element, just like the Crystals of Fire, Water, Earth and Air they encountered in their own world. This implies that the World of Darkness is an equal world to the one of light, operating under similar root principles, just like the Realms of Light and Darkness in Kingdom Hearts. FFIII goes further than we've yet seen in KH, suggesting that each are capable of overwhelming the other, but that doing so will bring the Cloud of Darkness to return both worlds to the Void if this happens.
As the party encounters the Crystals of Darkness, the party ends up teaming up with the spirits of the Warriors of Dark. These Warriors were the one who overthrew the Kingdom of Light in the deep past, and were also attacked by the all-consuming Cloud of Darkness in the end. One of the warriors tells you about how not giving up hope is more important than anything else, definitely something out of Sora's wheelhouse and it's not the last we'll be hearing of it. In both versions (but especially the remake, which jazzes up a speech that was otherwise empty) the Warriors of Dark emphasize balance as superior to light or dark supremacy, something that Kingdom Hearts has flirted with quite frequently since CoM, though it has yet to embrace it to FFIII's degree.
On the subject of the Warriors of Darkness, we might question whether or not there are KH characters out there cast in their likeness. This is up in the air, depending on your thoughts on the ancient kingdom of Light that the Warriors of Dark overthrew. If you see it as having evolved into the golden age world of Kingdom Hearts before the apocalypse, then no, we have not yet seen any "Warriors of Darkness" responsible for that downfall join up with the heroes of the present. I suppose the plots of KHUX and KH3 might yet make such a connection? If you instead see the kingdom of light as having developed into the Land of Departure, then Terra, Aqua and Ventus could instead be seen as the Warriors of Darkness in this comparison.
The party finally faces off against the Cloud of Darkness, which they were not able to harm in their previous encounter. She tells them that she cannot be harmed by light alone (for some reason she accredits this to her being in the World of Darkness, but this is demonstrably untrue given that she was invincible in the World of Light during your first battle), and the Warriors of Dark sacrifice their spirits to rectify this. We already know how the protagonists in Kingdom Hearts are made up of light wielders and at least one dark wielder, Riku, and the idea of this relationship being deliberate and intentional goes back to CoM. This is old news for us but nevertheless has its roots in FFIII. This apparently severs her connection to the Dark Crystals, so she resolves to use the Warriors of Light as her source of power instead. They battle, and of course the heroes are victorious.
FFIII is ultimately more fatalist than KH, saying that eventually the Void will overtake both the Realms of Darkness and Light, but it proclaims that today is not that day. The game ends with a plea for the player to find hope in dark times and then scenes of the FFIII party meeting up with certain familiar faces.
Conclusions and Theories
All-considered, FFIII's connections to Kingdom Hearts are not substantial for most of its length (prior to the final dungeon), no more than might be expected from any other entry in the Final Fantasy series in comparison to Kingdom Hearts. I've pointed out anything that could be considered a comparison, but I'm not sure how strongly I feel about most of them. It is arguably more notable how much the FFIII remake borrows from KH rather than the other way around! However, FFIII's final hours, and the game's stance on light, darkness and hope, seem to be very much in line with Kingdom Hearts' philosophy, and those come from the original.
In my opinion, any theorist trying to look to FFIII for clues about future events in Kingdom Hearts would do best to look to those final hours. Most of the connections and quasi-connections from the mid-game have already played out in full in Kingdom Hearts, with the possible exceptions of the destructive kingdom of light (since it is so intertwined with FFIII and KH's philosophy of light and dark) and the matter of Xehanort and Xande (which hovers so close to the heavily connected final hours that it might be unwise to dismiss it out of hand). We may yet find a destructive kingdom of light right in front of our eyes, might learn even more about the importance of balance between light and dark and the fundamental interrelations between the two, and may yet even see Xehanort suffering the effects of the all-corrupting darkness.
I know that I, personally, would be disappointed to see KH3 come and go without sight or sound of the Cloud of Darkness, even if it be in an unrelated role to these theories (say, as an independent force, or an ally of Maleficent). She would also make an excellent central antagonist for a later, post-KH3 game.
That's all I have to say on the matter. What do the rest of you think?