Final Fantasy has many recurring themes, creatures, names etc in all of it's games and this week we are going to take a look at one of the more famous ones the Chocobo!

The Chocobo is a large flightless bird and roughly acts as the Final Fantasy equivalent of horses, being domesticated for use as mounts, for pulling carts and carriages and for racing. They are often yellow in colour but later games also introduced other colours such as red, blue, white and black etc some of which could swim or fly. The Dissidia Final Fantasy Museum states a healthy adult chocobo can run at speeds over 20 mph.

Chocobo breeding is a sidequest in several games, as stronger breeds able to swim and fly can reach optional areas an airship cannot.

Chocobo Sprite from Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster

The Chocobo first appeared in Final Fantasy II and has made an appearance in some form in every game since! There have been spin off games including Chocobo Racing, Chocobo Dungeon and Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales.

Chocobos are usually fed greens with the most common one being Gysahl Greens these are sometimes used to summon the Chocobo on the world map.

Chocobo Racing

Chocobo are also used in racing, Final Fantasy VII introduced Chocobo racing as a minigame in the golden saucer. Players can place bets on the Chocobos and once unlocked players can eventually capture their own Chocobos and enter them in races. In FF VII players could also breed the chocobos allowing them to try get chocobos with better stats.

Chocobo Summon

Chocobo is also used as a special summon in battle with it being one of the first summons you have access to.

Fat Chocobo is a variant of the chocobo/mog summon that has a chance of happening instead of the regular summon

Kweh Origins!

Kweh is the distinct sound a chocobo makes.

The name "chocobo" derives from a Japanese brand of chocolate malt ball by Morinaga, ChocoBall ( Chokobōru?). The mascot for this product is Kyoro-chan , a bird who says "kweh".

kuu is a rough way to say "eat", whose volitional casual form is kue ("let's scoff 'em down!"), leading to Kweh!

To summarise the Chocobo is probably one of the most recognised creatures in Final Fantasy and has become such an iconic part of the series appearing in every main game and spin off and made appearances in other games in crossovers outside the Final Fantasy series.