Vagrant Story/Fridge

Fridge Brilliance

Why does the city fall apart in the end? Because it is the Gran Grimoire. Whenever a character finds a normal grimoire in the city and reads it, the book disintegrates into dust and its magic is permanently transferred to the reader.

In the Snowfly forest, there's an area where you fight two zombie knights. If it strikes you as odd that you're encountering undead in an area mostly populated by beasts, consider the fate of Faendos and Lambkin, the two knights who entered the forest with Grissom and got lost in the woods...
Much ado is made about what a badass Ashley is, but it's entirely possible to get through the game without unlocking even half of what he's capable of. And since all of his abilities are reclaimed from his lost memory, what a monster of a badass he must have been before he lost it all.