Editing Squall Leonhart

As part of Squall's design, Nomura wanted to include silver accessories, which took the form of his ring, necklace and weapon. Squall calls the lion "Griever" and it seems to be symbolic of his courage and takes on significance as the plot of the game progresses, such as being a final boss phase by the end of the game. Squall's weapon is a gunblade, which is a [[sword]] using components of a revolver to send vibrations through the blade when triggered. This weapon was intended to offer a new way for players to control weapons in battle, and Nomura feels that the weapon bears an odd appearance.<ref name="flaregamer"/> Squall's model is simply called the Revolver, although he can upgrade the weapon at junk stores. Squall and his rival, [[Seifer Almasy]], are the only gunblade specialists who appear in the game, although [[Laguna Loire]] uses one very briefly against a ruby dragon.

Squall's physical appearance consists of medium-length brown hair and cold grey-blue eyes. Character designer [[Tetsuya Nomura]] has stated that actor [[River Phoenix]] was the influence for Squall; both share the same birthday and physical appearance. A small scar runs diagonally across the bridge of Squall's nose, which he receives at the beginning of the game in a training duel against his rival Seifer. His last name was taken from that of the ''[[Final Fantasy II]]'' character, Maria's brother Leon, or Leonhart, and Leon is the name that Squall adopts in Kingdom Hearts. It is also a variation of the name "Lionheart", and lions seem to play a symbolic role within the game.

In ''Final Fantasy VIII'', Squall is known as a "lone wolf" by his peers because he never explains his feelings. Even compared to the originally indifferent [[Cloud Strife]] of ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'', he comes off as cold to his allies. His superiors, such as his teacher, [[Quistis Trepe]], regard him as difficult to deal with but greatly respect his natural talents. He is also known to be stoic in some situations. His taciturn attitude is also used for comic relief. In the cutscene where he first meets Rinoa, she coerces him into dancing with her at the SeeD graduation ball. He awkwardly bumps into other partygoers while staring constantly at his feet with a look of confusion. Rinoa, however, perseveres in partnering him, and Squall eventually reveals that he's quite capable of dancing, as it is a mandatory aspect of his SeeD training.

Throughout the game, he has a distinct rivalry with [[Seifer Almasy]]. The opening sequence depicts the duel in which Squall obtained his characteristic facial scar (and subsequently gave an almost identical one to Seifer, Squall's starts above his right eye and goes to his left cheek; Seifer's goes from left to right) and scenes in which Squall and Seifer are supposed to be cooperating are characterized by squabbles between the two cadets. Later, Seifer seemly allies himself with the Sorceress Edea, possessed by Ultimecia, requiring Squall to battle him several times. Nevertheless, despite their conflict, Squall still feels an underlying comraderie for Seifer, and mourns him in his own way when he believes Seifer to have been executed after an attempted kidnapping of Galbadian President Vinzer Deling.

According to flashbacks in the game, Squall grew up in an orphanage, along with many of the other main characters such as Zell, Seifer, Selphie, Irvine and Quistis. Though he remembers little of this past, it causes him to develop into an emotionally detached, highly cynical and introverted boy (his original goal is to go through life without any emotional links or dependencies). However, Squall gradually warms as the game progresses, and it is later revealed that his deliberate detachment from his companions is a defensive mechanism to protect himself from emotional pain, like he experienced when his older sister figure (Ellone) at the orphanage, one of the sole emotional supports in his early life, was forcibly separated from him.

One of Squall's gunblades, the Lionheart, appears as a Paladin weapon in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]''. It also appears as a high-level sword for Tidus in ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' and a Keyblade weapon for Sora in ''Kingdom Hearts''. The gunblade also makes an appearance in ''[[Parasite Eve II]]'' as a weapon that the gorilla like Number 9 uses. It also becomes available for use after completing the game meeting certain requirements. In ''[[Final Fantasy XII]]'', [[Gilgamesh]] carries Squall's [[gunblade]] as one of his weapons, yet Griever is not printed on the blade; likewise, it also appears (Griever ring and all) as a gun weapon known as the 'Ras Algethi' in the same game. The ''Velvet Nightmares'', weapons of choice of Yazoo in ''Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children'', closely resemble gunblades, and are constantly erraneously referred to as gunblades. The difference is that the Velvet Nightmares are merely guns that are used as melee weapons, whereas a gunblade is a sword that vibrates using a gun trigger as the hilt. In ''[[Dirge of Cerberus -Final Fantasy VII-]]'', [[Weiss]] uses his own incarnation of the gunblade but wields two of them, both of which are identical to each other, and assume a shape similar to that of [[Sephiroth]]'s trademark masamune sword.