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Solid Snake entered as one of the contest's biggest favorites and easily handled a well-supported Squall. The writeup attributes Squall's poor showing to his weak standing at the time and explicitly describes the result as non-SFF.

Squall beat Jill far more comfortably than much of Board 8 expected after his disappointing 2002 showing. The writeup treats the result as clear evidence that his strength had changed substantially between contests.

Squall stunned the overwhelmingly favored Luigi and immediately turned a normal match into one of Board 8's largest explosions. The upset generated extraordinary cheating accusations and permanently changed both characters' contest reputations.

Cheat: The writeup says Squall's upset of Luigi triggered cheating accusations on a scale rivaling any match in contest history, alongside mass account suicides, trolling, and other board chaos.

Samus beat Squall as expected, but Squall's strong showing confirmed that his earlier Luigi upset was not a fluke. The writeup notes complaints about Samus's sprite picture but does not treat the image as a demonstrated cause of the result.

Squall beat Bomberman but performed noticeably below the writeup's expectations from the previous year's standings. The result raised doubts about whether Squall had lost strength and reinforced frustration with a bracket designed to funnel him toward Cloud.

Squall beat Kirby in another predictable Midgar match, though Kirby performed better than expected. The writeup's main curiosity is that Squall only began separating after the match picture appeared.

Pic: The writeup says Kirby and Squall were dead even before the match picture appeared, after which Squall began pulling away, and explicitly suggests that the picture may have mattered.

Cloud easily beat Squall in a heavily shared-fanbase matchup, but the result did little to improve his standing against Link. The writeup remembers the match mainly as another predictable step toward the planned final.

SFF: The writeup explicitly frames Cloud versus Squall as a matchup with a massive amount of SFF, with Cloud dominating the fellow Final Fantasy entrant.

Squall overwhelmed Geno in a match whose main question was how much shared-fanbase suppression would appear. The result also helped frame the now-unpredictable Devil Division after Magus's upset loss.

SFF: The writeup says Squall likely applied some SFF to Geno, a Square-created side character from Super Mario RPG, and uses that as evidence for how Squall might have treated Magus.

Squall quickly ended the post-upset Knuckles bandwagon and controlled the match despite Knuckles' familiar daytime strength. The writeup uses the result to bury Magus's old statistical reputation and set up a difficult Vincent-Squall division final.

Vincent survived one of the contest's best matches after Squall repeatedly erased and rebuilt tiny leads throughout the day. The win was a huge bracket buster, but the writeup calls it a Pyrrhic victory because Squall's resistance further damaged Vincent's elite reputation.

SFF: The writeup says a slight amount of SFF, together with anti-votes, likely held Squall back in the close Final Fantasy matchup.

Squall crushed Tidus in what the writeup calls an SFF beating through and through. The result further buried Tidus's old reputation while briefly making a later Squall upset of Snake seem plausible.

SFF: The writeup explicitly calls the result an SFF beating, with Squall suppressing fellow Final Fantasy lead Tidus far beyond what their ordinary statistical gap suggested.

Snake crushed Squall in a match that had drawn meaningful upset discussion beforehand. The writeup calls it the first clear sign that Snake had made a major leap in strength during this contest.

Squall settled a long-running strength debate with Aeris, while Akuma's debut was respectable despite a field crowded with Square characters. The writeup treats Akuma's showing as evidence that better bracket placement could have produced wins.

Squall took control immediately, while Sora decisively reversed his old loss to Aeris. Aeris nearly fell behind Lara as well, making the writeup treat the result as a sharp confirmation of her decline.

LFF: The writeup argues that Squall's presence hurt fellow Square entrant Aeris far more than Sora, helping Sora reverse their old matchup and advance comfortably.

Sonic held off Squall for first, but Squall remained unexpectedly competitive despite sharing support with Sora. The writeup treats Sonic's narrow-looking advantage as another sign that four-way matches exposed his weaknesses.

LFF: The writeup says Sora drained enough Square support from Squall that Squall probably would have beaten Sonic without Sora in the poll.

L-Block led from the opening minutes and held off a long Snake comeback to take first. The writeup identifies this as the match where the joke entrant became a genuine Internet-backed force capable of defeating Noble Nine characters.

Rally: The writeup describes L-Block's growing Internet support as an active rally and says a late counter-push helped stop Snake's comeback.

Squall overwhelmed a Yoshi who had been expected to remain much closer, continuing Squall's unusually strong multiway form. The writeup treats Yoshi's performance as the real shock.

Squall and Sora advanced together yet again, while Yoshi collapsed far more badly than expected. The result reinforced the strange independence of the Squall-Sora pairing and exposed Yoshi's vulnerability in the field.

LFF: The writeup says Fox's presence hurt fellow Nintendo entrant Yoshi, while Sora remained largely independent of Squall and benefited from the contrast.

Cloud dominated, while Mewtwo turned a seemingly unfavorable draw into one of the contest's largest surprises. Squall and Sora were left fighting each other for scraps behind the advancing pair.

SFF: The writeup says Cloud's presence created massive Square SFF against Squall and Sora, allowing outside entrant Mewtwo to capitalize and advance.

Squall stayed near expectations against Akuma, providing little useful evidence for the looming Squall-Auron debate. The writeup considers the match largely inconclusive.

Squall won comfortably but looked surprisingly weak against Terra despite his history of crushing lesser Final Fantasy characters. The result reopened doubts about whether Squall was safely above Auron.

Squall settled a long-running near-elite debate by beating Auron in a match that finished close but was rarely in serious doubt after the opening exchanges. The writeup treats Squall as clearly the stronger of the two.

Snake improved again against Squall in their latest rematch and looked strong throughout. The writeup treats the result as the point where a Snake upset of Sephiroth became the dominant expectation.

Squall's easy win mainly served as a strength check before Missingno, while much of the writeup digresses into praise for the Bit.Trip games and Rayman discussion.

Squall absorbed Missingno's expected early surge and took control far sooner than the glitch character's supporters hoped. The result ended Missingno's run and left Squall's division shaped by an awkward future matchup with Vivi.

Red won comfortably, but Vivi's momentum carried him past Squall for second in the Expert Challenge ordering after the Mario upset. The writeup treats Vivi's placement as one of the contest's strangest strength reversals.

Squall crushed Hat Kid but still looked weaker than expected for a character some had placed near the top of the non-Noble-Nine field. The writeup treats the early struggle as another warning about Final Fantasy's broader decline.

Squall beat Garrus as expected but failed to dominate as strongly as the writeup anticipated. The result is remembered as an early warning sign that Squall's top-seed run was much shakier than it appeared.

Zelda destroyed Squall in the match that fully established her as the star of the main bracket. The writeup treats the scale of the win as evidence of a genuine Breath of the Wild and Smash-era boost, not a rally.