Although the lack of Final Fantasy characters in later games in the series (such as the base game of Kingdom Hearts III) was met with backlash from some fans, series creator Tetsuya Nomura found this to be bizarre as he always viewed the series as not at all being the "Disney and Final Fantasy crossover" that it is commonly seen as:


Nomura felt this approach was affected by the unexpected fan popularity for the original side characters from Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days and Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep (i.e. Roxas, Xion, Axel, Saix, Terra, Ventus, Aqua, etc.), especially compared to the series' main cast. He felt they needed to find a way to balance the original side characters with the Final Fantasy characters for future titles to meet both demands, but "with the sheer number of original characters that we have now, it's hard to say what the exact balance is going to be [in future games]..."