AMERICAN MONSTERS

A red gem. In the 16th century, Spanish invaders suposedly saw animals in South America that appeared to have carbuncles attached to their heads; these creatures became known simply as "carbuncles". The priest Martin del Barco Centenera's 1602 epic poem La Argentina identifies the carbuncle as a somewhat small, fast-moving creature with a mirror in its forehead, like a live coal lodged in a log.

A horned thunder god of the Dakota Indians. Haokah cries when happy, laughs when sad, feels cold in the heat and hot in the cold. He beats his drum with the wind to cause thunder and throws lightning bolts to Earth.

FF3 turns Haokah into a race of two-headed, humanoid lizards bent on killing the heroes. Maybe they're in a mellow mood.

A North American monster halfway between man and ape, more commonly known as bigfoot. The sasquatch saga goes back to mentions in Native American stories (the word "sasquatch" is a corruption of a Salish Indian word). But, aside from a few vague reports, Sasquatch took his first major step from myth to reality in 1958, when 16-inch footprints were found in Humboldt County, California. Sasquatch sightings increased from then on, reaching their high in 1967, when Roger Patterson apparently caught the apeman on film.
Sasquatch became a national hero of sorts. But, in 2002, he had a severe slap in his face. The noted bigfoot enthusiast Ray Wallace died that year, and his family publicly announced that he had faked the original set of footprints as a joke (inspired by the yeti) that got wildly out of control. It fitted - Wallace was a noted prankster who once perpetrated a hoax about cats living in forest treetops. And the Patterson film? According to the Wallace family, another hoax, and Ray was involved.

FF2's sasquatch carries a club, something which I don't believe is true for any accounts of the "real" sasquatch. In fact, sasquatches are rarely aggressive; however, there was a 1928 incident (notable for being pre-Wallace) in which a Canadian Indian man was kidnapped by a sasquatch and taken to a sort of "bigfoot camp". He wasn't hurt, though, and was eventually able to escape in a canoe. A more recent account deals with a group of campers having stones thrown at them by a bigfoot who told them - in English, with a high pitched voice - to leave. They complied.