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Kazuhige Nojima & Yusuke Naora did an interview where they chatted about FF7 and some general approaches to design & mythology that's a neat read if you're not bothered by needing to go through machine translation (or if you know Japanese, as it's an interview style that doesn't often get translated since they're full of some niche Japanese stuff).
Interview Part 1: 野島一成×直良有祐×深井龍之介 出雲鼎談ー神話が息づく地で語る創作とAIの未来（前編） | インサイド
Interview Part 2: 野島一成×直良有祐×深井龍之介 出雲鼎談ー神話が息づく地で語る創作とAIの未来（後編） | インサイド
One interesting bit that stood out to me was Naora talking about influential music and mentioning that The Velvet Underground's song "Sister Ray" was the source of the name of the Sister Ray cannon in FFVII (whose wiki entry I did just update with the link to this interview).
Given that direct confirmation from him, I think it's reasonable to speculate with fairly high confidence that some other things like the David Bowie Cover Band in The North Crater, and the "Velvet Voix" graffiti adjacent to the My Bloody Valentine poster in Loveless Avenue in Sector 8 were likely other bits of Naora's influence connected to his particular choice in music being tucked into little corners of the FFVII world design here & there.
It's always nice to be able to highlight some of his influences as the art director outside of what Nomura did when it comes to FFVII since they've both contributed a ton to it, but as I don't see quite as much about his specific ideas as often. This was a fun stand-out even if it's more of the sort of "Biggs & Wedge" type referential design thing that's a more of the lighthearted easter egg type thing.
Always fun to get little obscure details like this from offhand comments in interviews while also getting to see them being talked about in a framework of discussing more about the creative process in general, Japan's syncretization of religious & mythological themes, and other things that make that perspective unique, all in a really informal chat sort of setting that help give a different overall picture of what the sorts of collaborative back-and-forth between the Writers & Art Directors is like, and how they've changed over the years.
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