Line #28 Fridge/FINALFANTASYVII


1	'''As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked [[Administrivia/SpoilersOff as per policy.]] Administrivia/YouHaveBeenWarned.'''
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6	[[folder: Fridge Brilliance]]
7	* Rufus Shinra's HeelFaceTurn in the film was actually being foreshadowed during the game.
8	** Despite his talk of ruling the world through fear, he expresses nothing but disgust towards the monsters his father had placed in charge of Shinra and likely would have replaced them once the crisis was over.
9	** Also, he never commits any acts of mass murder to deal with his issues and only uses the big guns on very serious threats, like the Sapphire and Diamond Weapons. In contrast, several acts of outright murder happened under his father's orders.
10	** However, the biggest clue can be easily missed: after Tifa wakes up from the incident at the Northern Crater, Rufus sentences her and Barrett to be publicly executed. So where is the foreshadowing? He apparently allowed the rest of the team to go despite their previous fights against Shinra. However, Barrett and Tifa are known to be AVALANCHE terrorists responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocents from their bombings of the reactors. As criminals, they deserved a death sentence, so Rufus only punished the people who actually carried out the murders.
11	*** Though that could also be pragmatism on his part. The rest of the party are former Shinra employees that the company screwed over (Cid and Vincent) an actual Shinra employee (Cait Sith) and citizens of areas outside of Shinra's control (Red XIII and Yuffie). Rufus would look very bad executing them in the eyes of the world and his own workers.
12	* So when a Materia's level maxes out, the original Final Fantasy VII will spawn a new materia and tell you "X is born!" I thought that was a result of the BlindIdiotTranslation... but think about it. Materia is made of Mako, and Mako is the LIFE of the Planet... so that means that whenever a materia spawns a new one, it is literally giving birth, amoeba style. Nice one, Square Enix.
13	** But all Materia is crystallized life stream, so where does the energy for the new Materia come from? Think about it, as materia grows in AP it gains new abilities, explained as accessing the memories of the past, so the increased AP must mean more of the lifestream is somehow being 'stored' in the materia so that more memories are available, when it fills up the excess goes to birthing new materia. How do you gain AP, killing things, the stronger the thing the more AP. The best explanation is that your capturing some of the Mako energy that was stored within the things you killed, the energy that would have otherwise returned to the lifestream, and that is the AP that fuels materia growth. Your materia just gained access to Fire 2 because you captured and harnessed (part) of the souls of every sentient being you fought!
14	*** Worse, if that's true that means that even without Mako reactors running or new Materia being created part of the lifestream is going to be siphoned off into materia any time anyone uses non-mastered materia. With how useful Materia is most people are going to keep using them. That means the world may still be doomed as the lifestream is slowly syphoned away, all the heros did is slow the eventual death of the world.
15	*** The eventual death of the world is already assumed. That's the whole point of the Omega WEAPON existing, to start new life elsewhere after the world has died of natural causes (as opposed to being choked to death as Jenova and Sephiroth wanted, or being drained to death as Shinra was doing).
16	*** The extra energy comes from the accumulating knowledge you are experiencing first hand. Also note that the world has been naturally generating materia for millenia, perhaps since its creation. The creation of materia is far less a drain than siphoning the lifestream. Materia isn't just some crystal, it's life. It grows and even experiences asexual reproduction.
17	* When Cloud tells the story of the Nibelheim incident for the first time, there's a lot of little foreshadowing tidbits that you cannot help but notice during later playthroughs, namely:
18	** Cloud's POV during the train scene is actually from Zack's right until Sephiroth starts talking about Nibelheim being "your hometown". Although the speech bubbles still come from "Cloud", the dialogue is from the real Cloud (the sick grunt).
19	** In that same scene, Cloud starts doing squats when he gets excited. Which is a Zack mannerism that the real Cloud never displays IIRC.
20	** Sephiroth tells Cloud he can go visit his family and friends right at the moment when a grunt enters from the left side of the truck. That grunt is actually the real Cloud, whom Sephiroth is actually addressing.
21	** For someone who left only two years ago, everybody in Nibelheim sure takes a bit too long to recognize Cloud. Evidently, it's because of the helmet that is part of his grunt uniform.
22	** Cloud's Mom asks Cloud if what he's wearing is a SOLDIER uniform, presumably with excitement, and Cloud replies "Mom, I...", presumably embarrassed at her delight. Actually, Cloud's Mom's question is probably her sensing that something went wrong because she sees it as a "low rank" uniform and Cloud's embarrassment is about his failure. That's why Cloud's memory has so many blanks in this part; a good deal of the conversation was probably about Cloud's failure. You probably thought sometime that Cloud seems weirdly uncomfortable being around the mother he should have been eager to see.
23	*** Additionally, Cloud has many other flashbacks of his mother telling him to just settle down and marry an older girl. These flashbacks have the same 'painful white' flash, meaning they're painful suppressed memories. Why would they be painful suppressed memories? His mother gave him that lecture after discovering he'd failed to join SOLDIER.
24	** Tifa asks afterwards if she was very hurt when Cloud found her. Your first reaction would be to think she didn't remember the details of what happened. On the contrary, she is beginning to think that Cloud has assumed Zack's role in the story and is asking him something that only the person who attended her would know - just to affirm her suspicions that the real Cloud was the grunt she remembered being with them, and to see how much of the real Cloud is still there. Her constant interruptions when Cloud is visiting her house might have something of this as well.
25	*** Another possible interpretation is that she was, at the time, doubting her own memories and trying to make sense of what actually happened. Sure, Cloud clearly wasn't well when she found him, and she was sure he wasn't at Nibelheim... but she had been badly hurt, he knew things he shouldn't have unless he was there, and our minds do have a funny way of messing with our memories. IIRC it's not until they're in the Lifestream that she realizes Cloud was the grunt.
26	*** That was pretty much the case. In fact part of the reason she doesn't just immediately tell Cloud flat out that he wasn't there is because Tifa isn't quite sure if her own memories are correct because from her perspective after being taken out by Sephiroth she suddenly found herself in Midgar months later, as Zangan rescued her and brought her to a doctor friend of his but left before she recovered. Especially when Cloud knows details he couldn't have known unless he was there.
27	** The ending, or rather the [[NoEnding complete lack of one]]. Cloud cuts off once he and Sephiroth face down in the reactor and doesn't elaborate further. He doesn't believe for a second that he could have killed Sephiroth, but [[DidYouDie Cloud obviously didn't die either]]. All anyone knows at that point is that Shinra has officially stated that their best SOLDIER is dead. They're correct- Cloud did it.
28	** The reactions of everybody after Cloud tells the story: Tifa asks for a small detail, as discussed above. Aerith dodges Cloud's personal issues and changes the subject directly towards Sephiroth and the Ancients. She probably suspected she was seeing Zack inside Cloud since some time and Tifa's small questions probably confirmed her doubts. Barrett says the story doesn't make sense. He's right. Red XIII says "What a fascinating story". Which doesn't imply he believes any of it.
29	** Furthermore, the difference in power between Cloud and Sephiroth. Didn't Zack hold his own against Sephiroth before getting defeated? Surely a 1st class can't actually have been that (comparably) weak. A grunt, however...
30	*** As a good example of GameplayAndStoryIntegration, Cloud in the flashback has almost the exact same stats as the Shinra guards you first fight at the beginning of the game. Most players would just think he wasn't quite as powerful as the freakish Sephiroth, or maybe wasn't 1st Class yet and thus inexperienced, but this younger version of Cloud is almost hilariously pathetic and will easily get knocked out by the Nibel Dragon.
31	** More fridge foreshadowing: multiple characters express doubt that Cloud was a 1st class Soldier, but when he pretends to be a basic Shinra grunt (in Junon and on the cargo ship) nobody questions it.
32	* If you date Aerith at the Gold Saucer, she and Cloud have the following exchange (which, in hindsight, is a hint that she knows that Cloud has adopted Zack's personality and memories as his own):
33	-->'''Aerith:''' Cloud... I'm searching for you.\
34	'''Cloud:''' ............?\
35	'''Aerith:''' I want to meet you.\
36	'''Cloud:''' But I'm right here.\
37	'''Aerith:''' I know, I know... what I mean is... I want to meet... you.
38	* When Shinra opts to drop the Sector 7 plate onto the slums, it seems like overkill to take out an OddlySmallOrganization, and demonstrates just what a ruthless pack of immoral bastards most of the higher-ups are. And then we remember that it happened not long after Cloud presented himself to the president as an ex-SOLDIER. ''VideoGame/CrisisCore'' showed that [=SOLDIERs=] are so badass that they needed to send a small army in just to deal with one who had gone rogue. As far as Shinra is concerned, AVALANCHE had crossed the GodzillaThreshold by taking in a rogue SOLDIER.
39	** Not only that, but ''Before Crisis'' showed that AVALANCHE in the past has gone to omnicidal means to protect the planet, with one of them using a summon to try and wipe out all human life (which, ironically, it was Shinra that stopped them). And AVALANCHE has been willing to blow up mako reactors without any regard for collateral damage (a fact Reeve calls Barret out on at one point). So, we have a terrorist organization that's willing to wipe out humanity, and they now have someone on a similar level to SEPHIROTH on their side. AVALANCHE doesn't just look like a threat to Shinra, but to the entire human race!
40	** There's also the process of how Mako is made to consider. Since at this point your party will have blown up at least two Mako reactors, Shinra would be making up for the difference by creating more Lifestream for the reactors to use and taking out a genocidal terrorist group in the process, effectively killing two birds with one stone.
41	* If you look at Aerith's profile in [[http://www.finalfantasyviipc.com/ FF7 website]] you will see that her blood-type is O. People from this blood group are known as "universal donors", meaning that they can donate blood to people from any blood group. It fits perfectly with Aerith always giving the best of herself for the good of the planet, especially with her death.
42	* Cloud's blood-type is AB, making him a universal recipient. Many Japanese believe blood-type to be an indicator of personality. The table [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_types_in_Japanese_culture here]] describes the negative traits of Cloud's blood-type as ''Critical, indecisive, forgetful, irresponsible, "split personality"''. The other characters all have blood-type A, B, O, or "Unknown".
43	** There is an easily missed piece of Foreshadowing that comes from the Beginners' Hall's later iteration in Junon. When Cloud is giving a tutorial for materia division, he states, "I'm often told I have a split personality. I don't believe it myself, but who knows?" And ends the tutorial with "I almost feel divided myself at the moment." It turns out Cloud is carrying Jenova cells and thus, has a split personality divided by their personal motivations.
44	* When Cloud asks Aerith what answers she's searching for by following Sephiroth, she's extremely evasive:
45	-->'''Aerith:''' I'll go too. There are things I want to find out.\
46	'''Cloud:''' About the Ancients?\
47	'''Aerith:''' ... Many things.
48	** This is because she is trying to find out what happened to ''Zack'' -- and she's evasive because, by this point, she's seen enough (especially if she noticed the Buster Sword) to suspect that Cloud is impersonating Zack.
49	* Something that isn't really noticeable in-game, besides a skinny comment from Barret early on, but rather in character artwork; Cloud carries his famous Buster Sword and other large weapons with ease to the point of spinning them with one hand. But while he has some muscles, his build is far too lean for the average person to nonchalantly carry them. While being a SOLDIER, [[SuperSoldier known for their superhuman capabilities,]] is generally the excuse, he's practically a young man of little note compared to the muscular, tall physique of Sephiroth, and even Zack has a more fitting build to a degree. It's possibly a subtle nod to the fact that the Mako as well as the Jenova cells really are what gives Cloud his physical strength - he wasn't actually physically trained like any SOLDIER proper, especially in comparison to Sephiroth or Zack, since he wasn't in SOLDIER to begin with.
50	** Which doubles when it's shown as a grunt, he's more muscular because Shinra grunts are needed to be physically fit. SOLDIER's need to be fit, but you also need to be compatible with the Jenova genes.
51	*** Which leads to another brilliance, it's heavily implied that the game starts not long after Zack is killed by Shinra. Cloud was more fit as a grunt, but he spent the intervening time for who knows how long floating in a Mako tank and afterward so out of it from Mako poisoning that he couldn't even think coherently much less talk or move, so he's probably suffering from a bit of muscle atrophy at the start of the game.
52	* Probably a minor thing, but there's a company called Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, founded in 1982, which supply many firearms, including machine guns. The name of the leader of AVALANCHE, that guy with the machine gun grafted onto his arm? Barret.
53	* Why is Cait Sith so emotional during his not so HeroicSacrifice, and why does he refer to it as the "final farewell"? We all know that he's going to be safe, as he's really just Reeve, who will just send another Cait Sith to replace the old one, right? Consider the fact that he is a fortune teller, and consider the fact that Aerith will ''always'' be one of the party members that he says this "farewell" speech to, and consider the fact that he just read Aerith and Cloud's fortune. In other words, he now knows that Aerith is going to die soon, and that ultimately it will be for the good of The Planet, meaning it would do more harm to interfere with this. So he is forced to just let everything happen, and is emotional not just because of this, but because he knows he could never die for the good of others the way Aerith is destined to do so, regardless of whether it's an actual sacrifice or not (note WordOfGod says it isn't), but the closest he will ever get to it is by sacrificing an expendable toy.
54	** In addition, his farewell speech could really be him saying goodbye to Aerith knowing that he will not have the chance to do so when the time comes.
55	** When Cait Sith is on his way to solve the Black Materia's puzzle, he crosses the threshold into the chamber and collapses... and then gets up, ''surprised he can still move'' because Reeve has abandoned him to carry out this last mission. Reeve brings toys ''to literal, actual life''. Cait Sith I gets up with the first independent action of his life, realizes he's alive, and is happy to GIVE that life to save the world. When he begs not to be forgotten even if another Cait Sith comes along, it's because he knows he's only a splinter of Reeve's capacity as a HiveMind and was only given life just to give it back, but he understands the importance ''of'' that life and its brief existence. It's giving us this beautiful dramatic moment that the player is totally incapable of appreciating until finding out what Reeve's powers really do, while denying us that dramatic goodbye for ''Aerith'', the obvious death that every player would naturally ''want'' that scene for. Call it overhyped if you want to, but this game knows how to drive a theme right the hell home.
56	* In the English dub of ''Advent Children'' Aerith's name is never said aloud, primarily for dramatic effect but possibly also to avoid favoring the Aerith pronunciation over the Aeris one.
57	* Looking back nearly twenty years later, the game's story is dominated by a fascinating and only ''slightly'' controversial dichotomy between the [[SpaceJews all-but-extinct nomadic race searching for a "Promised Land"]] and the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName jack-booted military-industrial complex with Germanic pagan theme naming]] (and a head honcho literally named '''Heidegger'''). The parallels go even further with the Lifestream, a fictionalized version of the godhead from {{UsefulNotes/Kabbalah}}. It's the focal point of Cetra spirituality, yet the Teutonic bad guys also used it to manufacture through unethical human experimentation a DarkMessiah who at first believes himself to be part of the Cetra and a guide to the Promised Land, yet later sees himself as a superior being with a right to rule the Planet because of his lineage, as he believes himself to be the son of an [[GodIsEvil evil being from the sky whose name is one letter off from "Jehova"]]. He kills the last of the Cetra, but she triumphs in death when her strong spirituality enables the ''true'' godhead to save the day from the callous materialism of the Teutonic military-industrial complex and its infectious false god. And of course, all the while the Asian counterpart culture is a tourist attraction dreaming of one day reclaiming their former glory.
58	* Cloud being so powerful compared to everyone else in-game seems odd, but then you remember that even though he never officially became a SOLDIER, Cloud still had mako inside him, making him canonically stronger than his teammates. Also, after the Nibelheim incident Hojo experimented on both Cloud and Zack. We don't know what those experiments entailed, and they may have included additional augmentations beyond mako infusions and Jenova cells.
59	* This might just be FauxSymbolism, but Cloud's sword is outright stated to be larger than he is. Perhaps it's a metaphor for the fact that he took up the tough persona of a SOLDIER, but he couldn't live up to it. He's trying to bite off more than he can chew.
60	** Also on the FauxSymbolism note, the infamous Pandora's Box spell is only ever cast once per game. This isn't a bug - the enemy in question (Dragon Zombie) is specifically coded to set a variable upon death so that this final action is never repeated. This would be random and arbitrary were it not for the spell's name: once Pandora's Box is open, it can never be closed.
61	* The identity of the spy was in fact hinted at from the moment they joined. After all, what materia does Cait Sith join with? Manipulate.
62	* Safer Sephiroth's first action is to cast Wall on himself. Now what materia does Jenova Sephiroth toss at Cloud in the basement of the Shinra Mansion?
63	* As much as people love to harp on Cloud being the codifier for the "emo" protagonist, his angst is very much justified as you play the games. On top of the events of [[TraumaCongaLine his backstory]], he learns that he forgotten about his best friend Zack after he died saving Cloud and stole his life, may or may not have wooed said best friend's love (which is a massive breach of the bro code) and failed to save said love from getting ''killed''. That is more than enough to mess with someone's self-worth and psyche for a good decade or two. And then he learns that he is going to die from a seemingly incurable disease in ''Advent Children'' on top of having no purpose in life after killing Sephiroth, with or without said disease's depression side effect, and is stuck with the fact that his ArchEnemy is going to haunt him like a ghost until he dies. It is nothing short of a miracle that he is still a functioning human being throughout those events.
64	* Lightning and Ice seem like a random and unbalanced pair of materia to start the game with, but they really aren't; after all, what else would you give to a hero named [[WeatherManipulation Cloud]]?
65	* Despite what Sephiroth claimed, Hojo and Gast were more similar that he’d like to admit. They each had a child with someone they were studying, and they both go down trying to protect said child. [[NotSoSimilar That said, Gast genuinely loved Ifalna and Aerith, while Hojo never cared about Lucrecia and Sephiroth beyond their value to his research]].
66	* Many often questioned why no one used a Phoenix Down on Aerith after she was stabbed. However, something similar happened in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV''. When Galuf died, the other characters used Phoenix Down, Revive, and healing spells to no effect. Like Galuf, Aerith was ''DEAD'' dead, as opposed to being "defeated" or "KO'd". The likes of Revive and Phoenix Down can only revive people who were knocked out, not bring back the dead, as when a character's HP drops to 0, they're simply knocked out, hence why they can continue to move when the battle is over.
67	* During the Nibelheim flashback, Cloud mentions he is impatient to use the new materia the company gave out. Said materia is a Pre-Emptive Strike materia. Compare that to Sephiroth's, which are mastered elemental materias. While this really should tell you something is afoot with Cloud's story, and if you played ''Crisis Core'', Zack should have better materia at that point, it stands to reason that the Pre-Emptive Materia really was on Cloud's person. Now what does that Pre-Emptive Strike materia does, again? It raises the odds of beginning a combat with the enemy's back turned towards you. Suddenly, Cloud managing to stab Sephiroth in the back with the Buster Sword becomes less surprising and more hilarious.
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70	[[folder: Fridge Horror]]
71	* The weirdest part about JENOVA? You see and fight her scattered limbs, you see her severely-downsized form...[[NothingIsScarier but you never see the planet-destroying original]].
72	* From the Lifestream, all things originate, and to it all things return. Meaning people are knitted together from spare fragments of spirit energy, go live in a crappy world, then when they die, ''their spirit and consciousness is completely dissolved bit by bit'' and the cycle starts again. Then there's the fact that even as a living being, contact with raw Lifestream results in mutations, insanity, and other unspeakable things.
73	** Also, that lightbulb in your room? Powered by ''your dead grandfather's soul'' courtesy of the [=Shinra=] Electric Power Company.
74	*** Also, what happens to Grandpa's soul once it has been used to power that light bulb? Is it [[DeaderThanDead thoroughly spent]]? Is it [[AndIMustScream trapped somewhere]]? Think about it. Or better yet, don't.
75	*** Not exactly Fridge, since there's a cutscene where Bugenhagen shows you a simulation/vision of all the Lifestream drained from the world, leaving it a lifeless rock...
76	*** Grandpa's soul wouldn't have even reached the lightbulb. It would have already ''burned out in an atomic furnace'' to create normal electricity.
77	* Natural materia is quite rare, and with good reason: it's formed from the condensation of Mako over the course of many many years. Materia can be manufactured too, though it's said that man-made materia is less powerful than natural. Materia allows you to focus and call upon the powers of the land, or so they say. No matter how you slice it though, materia is spirit energy balled up into a crystal and used to perform magic. If you've ever used materia, you're a necromancer.
78	* Another spooky thing about Midgar: We all remember the scene when [=Shinra=] blows up the support beam holding up Sector 7, right? And how Tseng mentions how its self-destruct is set to go off if anyone messes with it too much... while this was undoubtedly to prevent anyone from messing with it once they'd set it to get ready to blow, this opens a whole other can of worms. Think about it: A team of 8 people could get to each tower's control unit, goof around mindlessly a few times, and ''completely wipe out the entire city.''
79	** What he's saying is that if the ''heroes'' mess with the self-destruct that he ''just activated'' it will go off. Not that if anyone just futzes around with the console on a normal day it'd go off. That'd just be stupid. He's describing the current, specific circumstances, not how it always works.
80	** Hell, just to take that bit of FH one step further: ''Why the hell were the primary support beams designed to be able to self-destruct in the first place!?'' Thank goodness nobody in ''this'' world thinks like that when designing major cities... umm, they ''don't'', right?
81	*** Worse still: ''A member of your party is Shinra's Head of Urban Development!''
82	*** Even worse: when [=Shinra=] caused the plate to fall, they killed two towns' worth of people just to get at a group of six. This at first sounds like [=Shinra=] holding a VillainBall, until you realize how [[PoweredByAForsakenChild Mako]] works; they were refueling.
83	*** Worst of all: ''Since your party has destroyed a few Mako reactors at this point it stands to reason that Shinra is lacking energy to power all of Midgar and is mediating this issue by doing away with it's own people.''
84	* All the talk of Cloud being a "puppet" by Sephiroth or Jenova, depending on your view seems just a kind of cheesy and stereotypical villain talk... Until you examine Cloud going catatonic. The moment he was made to abandon Zack's persona, he became like a lifeless, unresponsive doll. The puppet metaphor is ''literal'', because before Tifa managed to help him piece back together what little of himself remained, without being controlled by someone else there was ''nothing inside Cloud''. You were essentially playing as an ''empty, soulless shell'' for the entire game to that point.
85	* Aerith works as a flower girl. Sweet and innocent, right? Until you find out that the term "flower girl" has been used as a euphemism for "prostitute" in certain cultures, including [[http://books.google.com/books?id=tJnLqLkCEhIC&pg=PA9&lpg=PA9&dq=%22hua+niang%22+prostitution#v=onepage&q&f=false China]]. If you think about where she works, and wonder if her price of 1 gil a bloom is enough to make the rent, and think about how readily she agreed to date Cloud, and how comfortable she was pretending to work at the Honeybee Inn, and... well, it's WMG, but let's just say the poor girl might have had more than aphids to worry about...
86	** If you talk to some of the men outside the Honeybee Inn after Cloud enjoyed the company of 20 burly men (or just had a freak out, depending on which room you went in), you find out that Aerith sold some flowers to them for 500 gil. Maybe not a prostitute, but definitely [[TheTease a tease.]]
87	*** One of the men also says that Aerith told him that she ''wouldn't'' go out with him for even 1000 gil! It's actually more FridgeBrilliance than FridgeHorror in that it's [[TheTease Aerith's]] [[LittleMissConArtist little joke.]] Aerith presents herself as a "flower girl", and if men take that the wrong way, she charges them lots of gil to "buy her flowers." (Remember that when she was clearly literally selling flowers towards the start of the game, she only charged Cloud 1 gil.) So when it turns out that she really was just a flower girl and not THAT kind of flower girl, it's too late for the poor horny guys to get their money back!
88	* Remember the scene where Sephiroth stabs Aerith? [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEJ_3_wYROc Well, Game Theory did an episode on it...]]
89	** Building off of that, in the film sequel ''Advent Children'', the villains bring all the sick kids to the Forgotten City and have the kids drink from the water there. And then you remember that Aerith's body has been down there decomposing for the past 2 years. Ewww.
90	*** ... Or rather, her body and soul became part of the Lifestream. That water's clean... Well, until Kadaj... does that weird black inky thing to it.
91	*** "Peeing in the water", as this troper's friend put it. Let that sink in...
92	*** Does anyone else find it unnerving that instead of laying her to rest in one of the beds or something, the characters [[DisposingOfABody dump her body into the fucking lake?]]
93	*** Even more strange is the way Cloud is clearly ''standing'' in the water, but as soon as he lets go of her, she sinks at least a few meters to the bottom.
94	*** These are all wonderful examples, but there's one thing few if any people have ever talked about. According the game's lore, the Sleeping Forest acts as a barrier between the outside world and the Forgotten City. Anyone with actual Cetra blood can freely pass through, but anyone else is doomed to wander around in a space-distorting zone that will forbid them from getting past the forest. The only way to get past this as a party of non-cetra is by digging up and using the Lunar Harp. The only reason Aerith left was because Cloud was unsafe to be around after he nearly beats her to death. Now despite Sephiroth's original assertions, he doesn't have an ounce of Cetra blood in his veins, and the JENOVA pieces pretending to be him likewise are the furthest thing from Cetra. So what does this mean? It means that Sephiroth specifically invaded Cloud's dream to convince him to chase after Aerith and unlock the path to her. Had Cloud not pursued Aerith, she would likely have been 100% safe from Sephiroth/JENOVA's reach.
95	*** Actually, no. The Forgotten City is entirely open to the north. To enter it from the Northern Crater side, one just has to pass a few caves. Guess where Sephiroth is: yep, he's up north. The fake body Sephiroth uses also could enter the city from the north, which is exactly the way it exits the city after the deed is done.
96	* How did Lucrecia find out she couldn't die? ''She tried to kill herself.''
97	* There's the Hell House, an enemy that is powerful for its early appearance in the game in the Sector 6 slums. It looks like a fairly innocent house, but rams and guns down those who attempt to approach it. Do sufficient damage to it, and its innards pop out, which include a skull-like head and several arms. The horror becomes apparent when you remember that most people in the Midgar slums live in appalling squalor. Many live in shacks constructed of scrap metal and abandoned equipment. The Hell House seems to take advantage of this by luring its victims to what appears to be an actual, well-constructed and pleasant house.
98	* There's the moment when, after you've been taken prisoner by Shinra, you wake up to find that all the guards have been brutally killed off and the door to your cell unlocked. One of the guards' corpses is just to the left of your cell. Sephiroth was right outside ''your door'' as you slept. He may very well have been the one to unlock your cell.
99	* It is even more scary when you go back and look where Jenova was being held. When you examine it the game will show you a message saying that it was pried open from the '''inside'''. Along with many lines in the game and the battles when you encounter it is implied that you have been chasing after Jenova, taking the appearance of Sephiroth. It is said that she is a virus-like organism that infects others, and they have a degree of hive mind. Of course that all the sequels and retcons might have something to say about it, but it's still terrifying.
100	* Materia is heralded by many as the knowledge of the Ancients, i.e. the Cetra, who are played up as peaceful nomads since the one we know is a kindhearted young woman. However, Aerith was '''not''' raised as a Cetra. She was taken as a baby by Hojo after he killed her father and took her and her mother for use in his experiments. After her mother escaped with her, she was witness to her mother dying of wounds and then taken in by Elmyra. She was raised by a bog-standard human without practically any Cetra cultural influence other than what she could piece together herself. The knowledge of the Ancients? [[FireIceLightning Fire. Ice. Thunder.]] [[UniversalPoison Poison.]] Curses. ''[[SummonMagic Army-smashing summoned monsters.]]'' '''''World-ending spells that exist in opposition to each other.''''' The Cetra were ''not'' a peaceful people. Granted, if the monsters infesting the wilderness in the modern day are any example, the Planet is a DeathWorld par excellence, but if that's not the case (and it's hinted that Shin-Ra's practices are having a mutative effect upon the wildlife), who were the Cetra fighting? Each other? Jenova? Just how long did it take the EldritchAbomination to nearly exterminate the Cetra tribes? Was there time for them to become ProudWarriorRaceGuys, or were they already that way and overcome all the same?
101	** if you take the theory that Gaia is actually the future of Spira from ffx as fact, that means that the poor Cetra had just spent 1000 years in a cycle of suicidal sacrifice and killed the EldritchAbomination causing it, then were under threat by ANOTHER EldritchAbomination weapon controlled by a mad zombie/ghost, who knows how long after that a meteor crashed into their planet bringing ANOTHER EldritchAbomination in the form of Jenova poor Cetra can't catch a break...
102	*** Nah, the writer for both games came out and said there was no connection in an [[https://www.finaland.com/?rub=site&page=news&id=6355 interview]]. It was just something he [[ThrowItIn threw in]].
103	*** This is still taken as canon by some since Nojima said no and Kitase said yes. Granted, realistically Kitase said this in an unsure manner and isn't the Word of God so most people consider them separated. Still, the idea works a lot better than the Squall is Dead or R=U theory from VIII!
104	* Consider Final Fantasy 7 from Aerith's perspective. Her boyfriend disappears and is almost certainly dead. Years later, some random stranger cosplaying as him crashes through her ceiling. This guy has patterned his entire life on Zack and is obviously pretending to be him (to the point of impersonating a SOLDIER 1st Class.) Aerith would know immediately that he's a fake - she's been on the run from Shinra for a while, and it's not like there are that many SOLDIER 1st Class out there. So what's the logical conclusion from her perspective? ''She suspects Cloud has murdered her boyfriend and stolen his life.'' After all, from her perspective Cloud is a violent, mentally unbalanced terrorist wearing her boyfriend's worn, tattered clothes and constantly impersonating him (badly.) The logical assumption is that Cloud was connected to Zack's death. This is why she travels with him. If you do the Golden Saucer date with her, the reason she's there isn't because she feels anything for Cloud, it's because she's trying to (discretely) probe for information on Zack's death. But she can't be too obvious, because for all she knows Cloud is a serial killer, and if he catches on that she's connected to Zack, he'll kill her, too.
105	** Most of this is negated by her abilities as an Ancient, like her ability to speak to the Planet and the dead, but in a way it can be even worse. Aerith knows Zack is dead, she knows something bad happened to him and the only direct source of information on what happened is hideously emotionally and mentally shattered to the point of adopting her dead boyfriend's behaviours and blocking out his real personality. This means she knows not only was her boyfriend killed but whatever went down was horrifically bad.
106	* Enough people in Gaia get their arms damaged that 'Gun Arm' is a readily available self-defense item in almost every town you go to. Shinra must be an OSHA nightmare if modular, weaponized prosthetic limbs are this common.
107	* So, shortly after the second Mako reactor has been blown to smithereens, Cloud and Aerith spot Tifa riding a Chocobo carriage towards Don Corneo's mansion. Remember that the last time Cloud and Tifa saw each other, Cloud was falling towards the church where Aerith lived. From Tifa's perspective, Cloud had probably just fallen to his death, and she didn't yet know that Cloud is actually still alive. Now, imagine what Cloud's thinking as he sees Tifa heading off to the mansion of a pervy mob boss who will no doubt use her as nothing more than a trashy plaything. He must have been wondering how distraught she must be to find [[SexForSolace solace in hooking up with such a sleaze.]]
108	* Shinra cover up the destruction of Nibelheim, rebuilding the town & repopulating it with actors on their payroll, with the few survivors left in the town being rounded up & experimented on by Hojo. Consider that an early flashback states that Cloud wasn’t the only teenager leaving town to look for work, and you never meet anyone from Nibelheim other than Cloud & Tifa - did the others ever return home or try to contact loved ones after the fire, albeit unknowingly, and if they did, what happened to them?
109	** Becomes even more disturbing when you think about the only teenager turned adult they DO meet is Johnny whose father is no where near Nibelheim. WMG sure but I think the rest of the teens went to visit their "parents" only to be put down on Shin-Ra's orders.
110	* Another creepy point for Nibelheim is realizing that Jenova, the EldritchAbomination extraordinaire, was a relatively casual mountain trek away from Cloud's hometown. And it was ''alive'', albeit dormant, and likely temporarily stored ''in'' Nibelheim for all of that research in the local manor to be at least somewhat conveniently made at some point. Cloud and Tifa don't really consider it thanks to focusing on Sephiroth's massacre, but if anything had ever caused Jenova to awaken once more, their home would've likely been the first target as much of the horrors that would haunt the world of ''VII'' were comprised on their proverbial doorstep before they were even born.
111	** Want more food for thought? This entire story happened because Shinra, in complete and utter neglect and incompetence, left Gast and Hojo's research lying around in the mansion. All it takes is for Sephiroth finding his way through a hidden wall to the basement combined with seeing the horrific experimental Mako-infused subjects to start diving into the research for context, and ''everything is just there.'' If they had properly burned or moved their research elsewhere, Sephiroth would've been troubled by the encounter and then had nothing to go on besides Genesis' later prodding about the subject. And then for extra dickishness, they then just boot their old labs up again to make the Sephiroth-Clones ''in the ruins'', meaning they couldn't care less about learning from their mistakes.
112	* Junon has the Sister Ray, a cannon built into the side of a mountain coast that is utterly ''massive'', and this is before it gets turned into a WaveMotionGun for the purpose of disabling Sephiroth's barrier. But it's built with the cannon facing west, which strangely seems not really aimed at anything of note -- until you realize it's pointed at the general space of ''Wutai'', and as ''Crisis Core'' would show, it existed during the Wutai War. Shinra were so determined to oppress Wutai and take them over that they produced one of the most powerful man-made weapons in the franchise for the purpose of pulverizing indigenous people into compliance via immeasurable body counts and collateral damage with a cross-continental cannon. The only saving grace is that, as far as the lore implies, they never managed to pull the trigger before the war ended.
113	* Cloud's obviously [[IllGirl really out of it]] when he's Mako poisoned in Mideel, barely responding to anything and mentally coiled in on himself thanks to his DespairEventHorizon. But then pay attention to what happens right as Mideel is collapsing and Tifa is trying to wheel him out of there: he ''looks around'' at the ensuing carnage. He's conscious enough to react to external stimuli, but so mentally trapped in his own head that [[AndIMustScream he can do nothing about his situation while fully aware of it.]]
114	* Anyone who knows what [[EldritchAbomination Jenova]] is already knows that ''VII'' is a CosmicHorrorStory. But then you realize that through human ingenuity (and immorality), taking Jenova cells and embedding them into other living beings including other humans, [[BigBad Sephiroth]] was created. And through him as a successor of Jenova, he would effectively embed himself in the Lifestream and nearly end the Planet, becoming something almost tantamount to a PhysicalGod. We have no way to know if Jenova is a singular being or if there's more out there in space, but its chance arrival on the Planet managed the absolutely insane and impossible series of coincidences to create a planetary threat far beyond a species-destroying parasite, and even the ''Planet itself'' works in such strange and mysterious ways that it only further accelerates all the problems that could've ever happened. Jenova simply landing on a world that could grow into this state was already setting everything onto an inevitable path to hell and a half.
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Context Fridge / FINALFANTASYVII