was inspired by the Chocoball, a popular confection in Japan created by Morinaga & Company.

He created the first Chocobo designs in ten minutes during a lunch break, imagining chocobos as a near-constant companion players would connect with, similar to the horse Thunderbolt from Koya no Shonen Isamu. When Ishii presented the chocobo concept to series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, they were initially rejected,