The title, at least. You may have heard Square was deep in financial trouble when they started developing the original Final Fantasy game, and named it "Final Fantasy" because they figured it would be the last game the company would make before going out of business.
Today Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of the series way back when,
told Weekly Famitsu the story is false.
The naming process for the original game began with the motive of looking for a name that could be abbreviated to "FF," or "efu efu" which Sakaguchi says sounds good in Japan (no comment from me). Their first decision for a title was "Fighting Fantasy," but then they discovered a series of roleplaying books and board games in Japan already laid claim to that name.
Their second choice for a first word was "Final," which was also a common word used in Japanese media yet, somehow, had not been paired with "Fantasy" and copyrighted yet. They went with that one, but Sakaguchi says if it was taken too, they would have gone down a list of "F" words until they found one they could use.
Even before I heard the "it was the final game" rumor, I assumed the name of the series was Final Fantasy because the storylines were epic in scope and always involved your saving the entire planet from destruction at the end, thereby, it was the "final" fantasy for that world. But now we all know that isn't the case either. It's called Final Fantasy because it sounds good. The end.
