Square Enix made its position clear: Ariana Grande’s character “would not fit within the vibe” of their new game. So naturally, modders put her back within days of the demo launching.
It’s a classic dynamic — the developer closes a door, the community props it open. And in the case of Final Fantasy Resonance, which arrives on 22 October, the door leads to a genuinely strange corner of franchise history: a period when Grande and Katy Perry were, legitimately, Final Fantasy characters.
Ariana Grande in Final Fantasy: A Brief History
It starts with Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, a free-to-play mobile RPG that ran from 2015 until it was shut down in 2025. As with many live-service mobile games, it leaned on celebrity crossovers. In 2017, Grande arrived as a set of pixelated sprites — including a character sporting her signature bunny outfit from the Dangerous Woman era. Her song “Touch It” even played in-game.
At the time, it was widely mocked. Seemingly random celebrities appearing alongside a storied RPG roster felt jarring. But nostalgia has a way of rewriting things, and the pop star’s cameo has become one of the more fondly remembered oddities from the original mobile game.
Why the Developer Left Her Out of Resonance
Final Fantasy Resonance is a heavily reimagined reconstruction of Brave Exvius, rebuilt as the franchise’s first proper HD-2D title. It carries over the story and many characters, but producer Keisuke Nakashima was direct when Kotaku asked about Grande.
“Ariana Grande’s character would not fit within the vibe that we’ve created for Final Fantasy Resonance.” — Keisuke Nakashima, Producer
The game’s Visions mechanic lets players summon legendary characters from across the series — Cloud, Lightning, Cecil — to fight alongside them. Grande was part of Brave Exvius lore, not canonical franchise history. That distinction, apparently, is where the line was drawn.
How the FFR Vision Studio Mod Works
The mod comes from a team called FFR Vision Studio. By tapping into the data structure that Resonance uses for its Visions system, it imports nearly 1,300 units from the defunct mobile game directly into the demo. Each arrives as a summonable Vision in battle.
What you get: Grande, Katy Perry, Sora from Kingdom Hearts, 2B from Nier: Automata, Lara Croft, and over 1,200 others — all available as Visions in the current demo.
It’s not fully drag-and-drop. Each character needs custom movesets and abilities, and the team’s development blog confirms they’re still refining animations and building a skill dictionary. Side quests for specific Visions are also on the roadmap. That said, the demo’s progress carries over to the full release, so characters unlocked via the mod should travel with you into the main game.
From Mocked Crossover to Community Favourite
What’s telling about this mod’s rapid appearance is what it reveals about player attachment to the original RPG. The game was never critically celebrated, but it ran for a decade and built a community with genuine affection for its cast — celebrity cameos included.
The developer’s instinct to curate Final Fantasy Resonance as a tonally coherent experience is understandable. But the modding community’s equally swift response suggests that for many players, the sillier parts of the original mobile game were the point. Grande in her bunny outfit, cheerfully out of place in an HD-2D RPG, isn’t just a curiosity — for some, she’s the whole reason they played.
Final Fantasy Resonance launches 22 October 2026 on PC, Switch, Switch 2, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.
