Characters / Final Fantasy VII Remake - Remake Main Characters

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Cloud Strife

Voiced By: Cody Christian (English), Takahiro Sakurai (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs} Tanguy Goasdoué (French), Felix Mayer (German)
Young Cloud Voiced By: Major Dodson (English), Yukihiro Aizawa (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs} Gabriel Bismuth-Bienaimé (French)

"I'd worry less about the Planet, and more about the next five seconds."

The main protagonist of Final Fantasy VII. A former First Class member of SOLDIER, the Shinra Electric Power Company's elite task force.

Now working as a mercenary, he accepts a job to help the anti-Shinra resistance, Avalanche, take down his former employers by sabotaging one of the mako reactors powering the city of Midgar. In battle, Cloud wields the Buster Sword, a massive broadsword nearly as big as his body.

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• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Cloud's swords are capable of effortlessly slicing through steel and concrete without losing their edge.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: A story element that was not in the original game but added in Remake and expanded in Rebirth is that SOLDIERs eventually experience physical and mental degradation after the process that turns them into what they are. With this new element, Cloud spends a large part of Rebirth wondering if he is starting to experience this degradation, as he starts coming into conflict over the fact that he knows things he shouldn't know and doesn't know things he should know, experiences frequent headaches, and starts to be affected more and more by Sephiroth's influence, leading him to do and believe things he wouldn't in his sane mind.
• Adaptational Badass: The original game had Cloud be relatively realistic with his capabilities despite his SOLDIER status. This game puts on his Super-Soldier traits in full force, displaying abilities more akin to his Advent Children tier of skill and power, such as great leaps, avoiding bullets, tangling in physical combat with and beating immense foes and even holding his own against Sephiroth. Granted, he couldn't do much to Sephiroth in the end, but even that level of struggle would be out of his original self's league. Though that may have partially been due to them fighting in a realm where the laws of reality were not quite in place.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the original Final Fantasy VII, Cloud wasn't out to screw with things unless the others dragged him into it or Sephiroth was involved, and he barely cared all that much about Avalanche overall. But in Remake, when Johnny gets captured by Shinra security for questioning and ratting out Jessie, which could jeopardize the whole group, Cloud immediately jumps to wanting to kill Johnny - which horrifies Tifa and causes her to plead for him to back down. Notably, unlike in the original where Barret rehires Cloud for the next mission, Cloud's bad attitude leads Barret to choose not to rehire him for the Sector 5 mako reactor job, forcing the Arbiters of Fate to intercede, and the people who hire him for side-quests often berate him lacking altruism. In Rebirth, he is a lot less concerned over his increasingly worsening grip on reality and vulnerability to Sephiroth's power than he was at that same point in the original game. Where he was so concerned in the original that he wanted to stop and was completely transparent that Sephiroth could control him, here he only says to Tifa that he fears cellular degradation is hollowing him out and not that Sephiroth is able to communicate with his mind. Then he outright breaks a promise he made earlier that day to Tifa that he'd bring up any odd thoughts he was having when he hides the Black Materia he found in his belongings in the Buster Sword unbeknownst to the rest of the party, when before he did not trust himself to hold it and immediately gave it to someone else.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: He's a bit less abrasive in the early part of Remake than he was in the original. Instead of arguing with Barret over money, he agrees to help Tifa out with the filters in exchange for the rest of his payment for the Sector 7 job, and doesn't ask for more money than he'd originally been promised. Rebirth removes a scene of him attacking Aerith in anger and confusion, but otherwise fully conscious of his actions, after giving the Black Materia to Sephiroth and instead changes it to him non-violently coercing her to hand over the Black Materia while under Sephiroth's thrall. The one time he does attack a friend, Tifa, it was under mako induced delirium.
• Adaptational Ugliness: Heavily downplayed. While Cloud is still depicted as good-looking with a lean yet muscular physique, he now has very pale skin, lines, and slight discoloration under his eyes. It results in enough of a stressed, sleep-deprived appearance that his landlady, Marle, will ask more than once if he is getting enough rest.
• Afraid of Needles: Cloud isn't fond of needles. When Doctor Sheiran asks for a blood sample of his (to help him study the connection between SOLDIERs and the black-robed men, Cloud instantly shoots him down, despite knowing it's important. Sheiran notices it and doesn't push the matter.
• Always Save the Girl: Cloud tends to go out of the way to protect Tifa and Aerith whenever they're in danger, especially during cutscenes where he's often physically pulling them out of danger or dragging them to safety. It's even a recurring theme in his relationship with them since he made a Declaration of Protection with both women: The promise to help Tifa when they were children and being "hired" as Aerith's bodyguard when they first met.
• Always Someone Better: Both within and outside the party Cloud, is considered especially gifted in just about anything he puts his mind to, often beating those who had put in a lot of time, effort and persistence in their own fields. This is also Played for Drama, for the fact that Cloud is so much stronger than everyone means that the times he succumbs to Sephiroth's will get much more frightening for the party, as they cannot actually do anything to stop him.
• Demonic Possession: Unbeknownst even to himself, Cloud's will is vulnerable to being hijacked by Sephiroth thanks to the Jenova cells planted inside him. The otherworldly villain's hold over his psyche gradually becomes stronger, to the point where Cloud starts behaving a lot colder, more abrasive, and more bloodthirsty upon reaching the Temple of the Ancients.
• Amnesiac Hero: By his own admission in Rebirth, he has no memory of what happened between him and Sephiroth during their confrontation in the Mako Reactor, and when Tifa attempts to ask him what he has been doing in the 5 years since that happened, he admits he can't tell her.
• Animals Hate Him: At first. Wedge's cats all hiss at the sight of him, and Betty's cat friends all run away when he draws near. The surviving cat warms up to him after they save Wedge.
• Anime Hair: His hair is as spiky and gravity-defying as ever, consisting of several spikes jutting into the air which never change no matter the situation.
• Anti-Hero: A stoic mercenary perfectly willing to resort to more unsavory measures if that's what it takes to keep his loved ones safe. He demonstrates his protectiveness early when he moves to kill Johnny to silence any potential information leaks that could hurt Tifa. His Character Development sees him slowly begin to grow out of this and shift more into the genuine, noble hero his true personality is by the second half of the original game.
• The Artifact: Despite certain Final Fantasy series (and other certain JRPG franchises) having switched to more realistic hairstyles for their protagonists (compare him to Noctis from Final Fantasy XV, Yuri Lowell from Tales of Vesperia, or Joker from Persona 5), Cloud still retains his gravity-defying spikes because they’re one of his many iconic traits (and will likely remain that way).
• Ascended Fanboy: Played With. He became a SOLDIER First Class so he could be just like Sephiroth, whom he idolized when he was a child back in Nibelheim, but he's about as far from a Fanboy of Sephiroth as he can get by now, with Sephiroth being a massive Broken Pedestal to Cloud due to the Nibelheim Incident.
• Attention Whore: Downplayed; it isn't a prominent aspect of his character, but Cloud likes receiving praise and adoration from others, and part of the reason for his "cold, professional badass" attitude is to make people take him seriously and respect him. Rebirth calls attention to this with Biggs, who directly says he's trying to impress people acting this way. On other occasions when Cloud is the center of attention, such as leading the Seventh Infantry at Junon or fighting Dio at the Gold Saucer, he's caught off-guard when he gets praised for his performance, but once it sinks in what's happening he smiles and eagerly enjoys the moment.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: When Cloud is forced to crossdress in order to get into Don Corneo's mansion everyone at Wall Market is in awe at how attractive he becomes. When Cloud makes his way through the streets, several NPCs talk about how hot Cloud is or openly flirt with him. Talking to Chadley when Cloud's in a dress reduces Chadley to a blushing, stammering mess. Even Cloud acknowledges he makes a hot girl, telling Tifa he 'nailed it'.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The size of Cloud's BFS becomes a problem at a few points. When Cloud first investigates the apartment next to him, he tries to draw his Buster Sword against an apparition of Sephiroth. Given that Cloud's standing in the doorway, his sword ends up hitting the door frame. Also, when Cloud rests, he has to either completely remove his sword or tilt it out of the way so he can sit down.
  • Cloud's Nail Bat weapon gives fantastic increases to critical hits. Unfortunately, it has poor stats all-around and in Punisher Mode, it's the only weapon not to have a combo. Instead, Cloud will do a single strike (though this can send an enemy flying back).
• Back from the Dead: Maybe. It's subtly implied by the presence of Whispers of Fate as well as the content of his dream while falling from the reactor into the church that he actually died hitting the ground and had to be brought back to life much like Barret would later experience.
• Badass Biker: He has inexplicably awesome bike-riding skills. He drives a bike twice in Remake, and ends up destroying a bunch of Shinra bikes, a truck, and even duels Roche while both are riding their bikes. Some of Cloud's dialogue indicates that this is a standard for members of SOLDIER. In Chapters 17 and 18 of Remake he pulls some insane stunts with his motorcycle that go far beyond he did in the original game or even in Advent Children.
• Bash Brothers: In spite of their differences, Cloud and Barret work very well together in a fight. They even strike a Back-to-Back Badasses pose at one point. In Rebirth, he's also this with Zack when they team up against Sephiroth at the end of the game.
• Batter Up!: A weapon he can obtain from the kids at the Leaf House is a baseball bat covered in tape and nails. Fittingly, it alters the animations of his Punisher Mode attacks, winding up before delivering a powerful swing as though he were a baseball player.
• Beam Spam:
  • Rebirth adds him the ability to attack enemies with several weak blade beams, to make air combat more manageable for him.
  • His Synergy ability with Aerith, Firework Blade, involves Aerith casting magic on Cloud's BFS to turn it into a Spell Blade, which he then unleashes with several ranged blade slashes before they both finish off their enemies with a Sword Beam and fireball combo.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: In Chapter 8 of Rebirth, he gets ambushed and knocked out cold by being smacked in the face with a baseball bat covered with nails. When he wakes up, his face doesn't have a scratch on it.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Cloud becomes especially caring and protective towards Aerith throughout the games, not just because she goes out of her way to express how much she sincerely appreciates him for who he is, warts and all, even when others would rather shun him or want nothing else to do with him due to his standoffish attitude, but the fact that she very patiently guides him out of his shell and encourages him to experience the simple joys of life - from socializing with other people and gaining their friendships/respect, to earning new accomplishments and accolades for himself that increase his self-esteem - experiences that Cloud deeply craves, but would otherwise never take the first step to fulfill on his own. It's also implied that he is subconsciously aware that he's destined to lose Aerith as decreed by fate, causing him to feel even more protective towards her, so strongly that he's able to break free of Sephiroth's seemingly impenetrable mind control, as well as the Black Whispers' attempt to hijack his body, through his own willpower the moment he sees Aerith in great danger.
• The Berserker: His Punisher Mode is much less choreographed than his Operator Mode but dishes out more damage per hit. He can even imbue the "Berserk" status effect on himself naturally in Punisher mode by charging his attack, but it will only last a few seconds.
• BFS: As to be expected, Cloud's starting weapon is the iconic Buster Sword, which is nearly as large as he is. His other weapons are also swords that are just as large.
• Big Damn Heroes: After Cloud's fight against Rufus in Remake, Tifa comes to his rescue at the last second when he's about to fall off Shinra Tower.
• Big "NO!": At the climax of Rebirth, Cloud yells the word in defiant fury as he breaks free of the Black Whispers and swings his sword to block Sephiroth's attack meant to kill Aerith.
• Black Knight: Downplayed. While he isn't a "knight" in the traditional sense, he shares a lot in common with the Dark Knights of previous Final Fantasy games and can be considered an adjacent to them. Cloud doesn't particularly use dark magic, but he tends towards dark aesthetics and weaponry, formerly worked for an evil (corporate) empire, is brooding and introspective, and struggles with his sense of self — all traits of Final Fantasy Dark Knights.
• Blade Spam: His Ascension Limit Break involves him attacking at high speed sword strikes too fast for the human eye. Downplayed with Triple Slash, a rapid 3 hit combo that can flow into another Triple Slash for decent effect.
• Blue Is Heroic: He wears a blue outfit and is the main protagonist of the game. At the same time, it should be noted that the outfit he wears is a modified version of the evil Shinra's SOLDIER uniform.
• Broken Ace: Cloud excels at just about anything he puts his mind to. He's an elite Super-Soldier, can beat veteran bodybuilders in squatting competitions, is a Badass Biker, and performs some truly spectacular dance moves in Wall Market and at the Gold Saucer. Rebirth also adds the ability to play a piano, skill at both formation marching and drilling troops, a top chocobo jockey, and an expert Queen's Blood player. He's also dealing with a lot of repressed trauma from his Dark and Troubled Past. Notably, he's quick to learn new skills on the fly, and grows stronger as both a swordsman and a warrior at an alarmingly fast rate, with even Sephiroth acknowledging near the end of Remake that Cloud has yet to reach his full potential. This growth, however, is compounded by Cloud's insecurities as a person, leaving him weak and vulnerable from a mental standpoint despite his many talents.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Just like in the original, Jenova cell experimentation has caused him to become subject to Sephiroth's machinations, most notably when Sephiroth hijacks his mind and compels him to retrieve the Black Materia for him, with Cloud turning into a possessed madman until seeing Aerith in danger snaps him out of it.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The brooding, stoic, and troubled Cloud shares this dynamic with the gentle and compassionate Tifa and with the equally compassionate though more assertive Aerith.
• Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: Cloud's massive Buster Sword displays his often blunt and confrontational thought processes on the outside. Lampshaded by Marle, who says he is all sword and no skill. Rebirth emphasizes this, giving him violent looking cross guards and jagged blades at the nadir of his Sanity Slippage as Sephiroth exerts his control over him.
• Can't Drop the Hero: Played With. As the main character of the game, the player can never voluntarily remove Cloud from the party, though there are story sections where he isn't the main controllable character. Rebirth does eventually allow the player to remove Cloud from the party, but only on New Game Plus.
• Car Fu: He's quite able to fight with his BFS while riding a motorbike and he employs the bike itself as a weapon when escaping the Shinra building, barely missing Heidegger with the bike's wheel.
• Character Catchphrase:
  • "Not interested." Cloud's cool and aloof nature leads to him pushing people away when they try to get close to him. He says a lot of lines similar to "not interested" when they do, but that exact wording is the most consistent way he says it.
  • "Ex-SOLDIER." Several people identify Cloud as a SOLDIER due to the mako infusion in his eyes. Cloud becomes a minor Phrase Catcher with "Are you in SOLDIER?" from a lot of people, though Cloud is quite quick to correct them that he quit. Even his default outfit is labelled at "Ex-SOLDIER: First Class" in the Costa del Sol changing booths. This gets deconstructed in Rebirth when Cloud meets Dr. Sheiran in North Corel, who tells him that being a SOLDIER isn't just a mere job, but also something that he'll carry with him for the rest of his life.
• Character Development: Cloud starts off as aloof and cold, but through his interactions with Biggs, Wedge, Jessie, Barret, Tifa and Aerith he slowly defrosts and becomes more openly compassionate. However, it's gradually shown in Rebirth that while he's like that to Avalanche, he doesn't share the same level of consideration towards strangers and usually needs to be egged on by someone to accept a job.
• Chick Magnet: Even more so than the original game. Other than Tifa, Aerith, and Jessie, several female background characters are attracted to him, like his two fangirls at the Corneo Colosseum and the Honeybee girls. And when he wears a dress, he becomes a Dude Magnet. In Rebirth, if Yuffie happens to be his companion on the first visit to the Gold Saucer, she lampshades the trope when she finds out Cloud knew Jessie, and says it's his destiny to be surrounded by "hot chicks".
• Childhood Friend Romance: If Cloud's Relationship Values with Tifa is high enough in Rebirth, they get a Relationship Upgrade on the second Gold Saucer date where they share a Big Damn Kiss, many years after they parted ways as kids.
• Childhood Friends: With Tifa. According to her recollection, they grew up in the same small town and used to play together before Thea Lockhart's death, of which afterwards they didn't hang out as much, shown in Cloud ignoring Tifa who calls out to him and keeps walking in a flashback. One of their biggest interactions was right before Cloud left to join SOLDIER when he asked her to meet him on the water tower that night.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Cloud goes hard back into the unreasonable version when Tifa persuades him to start taking random jobs to build up his reputation, and the other members of Avalanche instead tell everyone that Cloud will do 'anything' - leading to him doing rat exterminations, hunting for cats, rounding up kids for school, talking to old people, playing music discs to cheer up depressed people, winning squat contests, and so on. In his case, it's less that he feels responsible for everything and more along the lines of the whole scenario where someone is forced to do underpaid work in the hope of building enough of a rep to start a proper business - he is rude to everyone asking him to help them and complains about the menial quality of the work almost the whole time.
• Chuunibyou: Remake focuses more on it being the consequence of his trauma, but has fun with it by having those around Cloud immediately clock his behavior as a childish affectation, comparing him to local children or outright calling him on his bullshit. He even spreads the syndrome to people around him, with young people in Sector 7 rushing out to buy "big-ass swords" and imitating his rude mannerisms, and the children of Sector 5 making homemade Buster Swords. By Rebirth, the rest of the main characters have all seen through Cloud's exterior to know that he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, but let him keep up the act because he's The Ace of their group and because they know what a good person he is on the inside.
• Close-Range Combatant: As a swordsman, Cloud's strength is to be in the thick of things up close and personal. This is mitigated by the long reach of the Buster Sword (or whatever he currently has equipped) and Cloud himself is capable of quick bursts of speed, via lunging or dashing, allowing him to close the distance. Rebirth loosens up on this and gives him the ability to throw sword beams at no cost, greatly increasing his long distance capabilities.
• Closest Thing We Got: Why Cloud is designated The Leader of the group from Rebirth onward. He clearly has memory problems and some unknown (to the others chracters) mental issues, but he was SOLDIER and has worked for Shinra for years, which makes him the more experienced of the group compared to Tifa (who is a great martial artist, but very much not an actual military person), Barett (impulsive self-taught terrorist leader), Aerith (flower girl and White Mage) and Red XIII (escaped lab experiment).
• The Comically Serious: Cloud's dour attitude is played for comedy by putting him in the most ridiculous situations imaginable in the Wall Market. Rebirth has him playing this role more often in side content, with his aloofness being contrasted by the wacky shenanigans, quirky NPCs, and minigames he interacts with.
• Companion Cube: Cloud jokingly dips into this when he puts his sword away after finding a hotel at Costa del Del, telling it to hold down the fort while he's gone.
• Cosmic Plaything: This time around, Cloud increasingly shows frustration with how he doesn't seem to have any control in his life, such as his monologue on the train. It makes him an easy target for Sephiroth's manipulations since this Sephiroth makes sure to rub it in every single time Cloud fails. Despite hating Sephiroth for killing his mom, he briefly considers joining his enemy when Sephiroth offers to let Cloud make his own fate.
  Sephiroth: [after Sector 7 is destroyed] You have failed again, I see.
• Counter-Attack:
  • In both Remake and Rebirth, Cloud can do counterattack automatically by guarding in Punisher Mode, and a fair number of opponents are most easily defeated by simply turtling up and letting them beat themselves up. It even triggers unique interactions during his Duel Boss with Rufus and Darkstar in Remake.
  • Cloud's Counterstance weapon ability in Remake and Rebirth has him pause and assume a defensive stance, and if attacked he'll absorb most of the damage and retaliate with a powerful sword slash that deals much more damage and stagger than the basic counter-attack move.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: Unlike his main love interests who are usually more subtle when they're envious, Cloud being... Cloud shows his jealousy much more overtly.
  • In Remake, when Cloud and Aerith escape from the church, he gets noticeably pushy when asking how Aerith knows Reno and Aerith teasingly asks if he's mad when he gets annoyed by her dodging the question.
  • In Junon, while Red (using his natural voice, represented in subtitles as ???) and Aerith are conversing privately in her room, he not only eavesdrops, but when his presence is noticed he outright asks Aerith immediately who she's with, and seems quietly relieved when he finds out it's Red.
  • If Cloud is either by himself or with Tifa during the first Gold Saucer date sequence and speaks to Aerith, she makes a comment about finding someone else to accompany her. This works spectacularly, with Cloud immediately over-reacting, and then coming up with a weak excuse about Shinra spies to justify why she shouldn't. Aerith (and Tifa, if present) clearly doesn't buy it for a second.
  • When Aerith brings up Zack in Gongaga, Cloud asks her if she still has feelings for him. Aerith is even caught off guard with how on the nose Cloud is. To make matters worse, he even goes as far as calling Zack a loser for leaving her in the dark for five years, then doubles down by saying Zack is probably dead.
  • During the second Golden Saucer date, if Cloud dates either Aerith or Tifa he gets jealous when Zack is brought up. On Tifa's date, he notes that Aerith must still have feelings for Zack and seems displeased, and on Aerith's he noticeably relaxes far more after Aerith clarifies that despite the initial similarities she noticed between them she wants to be with Cloud for who he is.
• Crippling Overspecialisation: Potentially. While Cloud is generally a Jack of All Stats, with the right builds he can focus entirely on physical or magical damage if you so choose, at the expense of ability with the other.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • Using the Nail Bat in Remake transforms Cloud into this as the weapon boosts its critical damage and hit rate without increasing its base damage of 30 to both physical and magical attack stats even after improving the weapon.
  • The Crystal Sword in Rebirth gives Cloud boosts to his critical hit rate and damage, while being a powerful weapon in its own right. The tradeoff being that it doesn't have many materia slots, so Cloud becomes much more reliant on weapon abilities.
• Custom Uniform: Cloud's customary SOLDIER uniform has been modified to remove one of the pauldrons and attach three bolts to the other.
• Dash Attack: The Focused Thrust weapon ability in Remake and Rebirth has him lunge forward several yards in a single stab attack with his sword. This attack specializes in increasing the enemy's stagger bars.
• Deadpan Snarker: To a bigger extent than in the original game. Cloud is full of snappy remarks in the remake, most of them aimed at Barret (though not even allies and enemies are spared). And given how much he retorts, their relationship becomes straight-up Snark-to-Snark Combat.
• Death Glare: After the Turks seemingly kill Biggs and Jessie during their attack on Sector 7's pillar, Cloud lunges at Reno with a furious glare. He also looks murderous when he overhears Hojo talk about his plan to make Aerith reproduce.
• Declaration of Protection:
  • As a child, he made a promise to help out Tifa when she was in trouble, and despite it being a silly promise between children, both Cloud and Tifa put great value into it.
  • He becomes Aerith's bodyguard after he happens upon her being accosted by Turks in the slums, which kickstarted their relationship and makes him protective of her even after his "job" is over.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • As in the original game, of the Mercenary '90s Anti-Hero. He's strong, charismatic, handsome, brooding and does lots of cool stuff like riding motorcycles, doing backflips and spouting curt one-liners. It's all a part of his bravado, after all, and one that fools only a few characters. When he becomes Aerith's bodyguard, it quickly becomes clear Aerith doesn't actually need his protection and she just plays along as an excuse to keep him around and flirt with him. Even Tifa easily sees through the tough guy persona he puts on as well. Rebirth further deconstructs this, as his need to be a badass is one of the ways Sephiroth manipulates him, causing him to attack Tifa because a part of him couldn't think he had been wrong about her surviving. Despite multiple people and his own memories making him remember Zack was a SOLDIER in the Nibelheim incident, Cloud's need to be the man in charge rationalizes Zack as the trooper who died rather than the actual SOLDIER and that Cloud was the trooper who lived. It also becomes more and more clear it literally is a façade; a false persona that Cloud himself doesn't know he has on.
  • As in the original game, the very notion of a player character. Cloud is aloof, anti-social, but nonetheless impresses all around him with his general badassery and history of being one of the most elite forces on the planet and has women hanging off of him left and right, sometimes literally. However, despite all he has going for him, Cloud is just as much a pawn of the forces around him as the player themselves, and whenever his air of badassery is not impressing those around him or is challenged he has a tendency to shut down and have a hard time of it, much like the player themselves over a part of a game where fighting isn't the answer. He also tends to disregard the parts of his history that don't conform to being impressive, most crucially that his superhuman strength is not the result of being a SOLDIER but a similar experiment that made him more vulnerable, not less, to malevolent influence. Lastly, his worst moments are brought about by him thinking and doing things for himself, while a number of his most crucial accomplishments are due to finding strength in others, not just his own.
• Defrosting Ice King: Cloud starts the game being aloof and making it clear he's a merc who's Only in It for the Money. Over the course of Remake, he warms up to the people he hangs around with and teams up with for Avalanche as time goes on, defrosting more and more.
• Determinator: One of Cloud's most defining traits. No matter the odds, no matter the risks, and no matter how much others try to dissuade him from trying to accomplish something that seems impossible, he stubbornly refuses to bend and sets off to do exactly as he wants. In Remake, he successfully pulls off a three-man rescue mission to save Aerith from Shinra's headquarters by storming the heavily guarded building itself. Throughout Rebirth, even with Sephiroth's control over his mind heavily weighting him down, Cloud is determined to push through and stop the villain's malevolent plans from coming to fruition. Upping the ante from his 1997 counterpart, this Cloud actually willpowers his way past the Whispers' stranglehold and stops Sephiroth from killing Aerith at the climatic moment. Even though timeline distortions causes Aerith's fate to rewind to its intended outcome, it's also implied through tell-tale signs that one version of her does survive in a newly created branched timeline as a direct result of Cloud's actions. On the unfortunate end, Cloud's determination is also deconstructed, because while he is naturally self-driven, his actual confidence is often a product of being under the illusion that he's more of an accomplished badass than he actually is, and whenever this construct isn't directly propping him up, or it gets challenged, his resolve wavers until he or someone around him finds a way to either prop it up again or help him with it. While his single-minded focus, for the most part, is his own willpower, he is also drawn by the will of Sephiroth egging him on to "join the reunion". It's heavily implied that saving Aerith was only half the reason he stormed Shinra headquarters, as immediately after she is safe he tries to get to Jenova and collapses. In Rebirth, his determination to get the Black Materia gets so bad that the only way to get him back on track when he wants to slaughter the Turks is to convince him that there are better things to do. Worst of all, this means that he shrugs off most of his mental episodes in the simple belief that he can just power through them.
• Dimension Traveller: At the end of Rebirth, Cloud may have become this as a result of being summoned to a different timeline by an alternate version of Aerith, which also likely involved merging his consciousness with that of his other self from that timeline. His actions are shown breaking reality apart into several possible branches, and he's able to perceive the golden breach in the sky that signifies a doomed world in the final cutscene. Whether he saved Aerith or not in one of these possible timelines is anybody's guess at the moment, but the reactions of the party strongly hint that she died in their version of reality.
• Disappeared Dad: According to Trace of Two Pasts, Cloud's father was a Wanderer, a man "Like the Wind" who never stayed in one place for long. He'd shown up in town one day and had a brief romance with Cloud's Mother, Claudia, but he was never well-liked by the rest of the community. After Cloud was born his Father became restless, and stared taking longer and longer forays into the Mountains. Then one day he never came back; all that was ever found of him was a few of his belongings.
• Disguised in Drag: Disguises himself as a woman to infiltrate Don Corneo's mansion, just as in the original game. Progress in sidequests related to the gym can determine what he ends up wearing.
• Distracted by the Sexy: He tries to keep a straight face, but Cloud does stutter around other women if he's attracted to them.
  • In Remake, he stares in awe at the red dress Aerith wears to Don Corneo's place.
  • In Rebirth, Cloud tries not to stare at Tifa in her swimsuit or her chest, something Tifa seems to notice and teases him about his shyness.
  • In "Rebirth", if the player gets the Aerith date, Cloud will stare in awe at her when she sings the title theme of the game.
• Does Not Know His Own Strength: Played for Drama, but Cloud doesn't seem fully aware of his enhanced Super-Strength and ends up hurting Tifa when he hugs her too hard during her optional scene in Remake's Chapter 14.
• Double-Edged Buff: In both Remake and Rebirth, holding down the attack button in Punisher Mode will have Cloud unleash a Sword Plant attack that will grant him the berserk status effect for a few seconds, increasing his attack but lowering his defense.
• Dressing as the Enemy: The fact he's dressed in a SOLDIER uniform makes several NPC in Shinra Tower simply assume he's still a loyal employee of the company. In Rebirth, he dresses up as a Shinra Trooper in Upper Junon in order to sneak into the Shinra-8.
• Dub Name Change: His Climhazzard Limit Break was renamed Ascension in the English localization, though the Japanese version keeps the original name.
• Dull Surprise: Generally tries to keep a cool appearance by rarely reacting much to anything around him, and it reflects in both English and Japanese voices. However, read between the lines and it's clear he's just a tad bit incredulous in more crazy circumstances, or subtly panicked in others.
• Easily Forgiven: After attacking Tifa thanks to Sephiroth's manipulations in the Lifestream, Cloud is horrified by what he did and stays by her side until she recovers. Once she wakes up, Cloud immediately tries to leave unable to look at her after what he did. Tifa, however, doesn't hold it against Cloud knowing he would never consciously do such a thing as the two reflect on a childhood incident where she nearly died climbing Mt. Nibel and Tifa remembering that Cloud was the only one who stayed to save her, contrary to her prior belief that the incident was his fault thanks to buying into the other village kids' lies. After apologizing for putting the blame on him when they were kids, she, in return, vows to do even better by him from now on.
• Empowered Badass Normal: All members of SOLDIER are Mako enhanced, but those in the 1st Class division are further enhanced with Jenova cells which grants them far greater combat abilities. In Cloud's case, he never made it into SOLDIER, but Hojo's experiments have granted the same effect.
• Establishing Character Moment: Following the example of the original, the first few minutes of gameplay with Cloud display his aloof, snarky and uncaring demeanor, but as the bombing mission goes on, he also does show concern for Jessie, seems to have a mysterious mental episode before planting the bomb, and demonstrates a little bit of a cocky smile when complimented on his super-human capabilities. All these traits work together to show a stoic out for his pay on the surface, and someone that has a young streak and potential issues beneath the cool facade.
• Even the Guys Want Him: As Cloud is a World-Class Beauty, other characters frequently remark on how good-looking he is, including male characters like Chocobo Sam, Rude and the hoodlums who come to assassinate Barret. Andrea definitely takes an interest in him, inviting the ex-SOLDIER to the Honeybee Inn to do a live dance performance on stage with him. And after he puts Cloud in a dress, all the other men take an interest in him too. Cloud even ends up with an LGBT Fanbase at one point, getting his own fanclub, with the chairman being gay-coded enka singer AKILA, who sends him flowers.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: He gets specifically called 'Blondie' a lot as a complement and tends to get attention from all types of people, such as the folks working in the Honeybee Inn who loved him when he performed.
• Exact Words: He has a tendency to use these and other vague declarations when pressed about his life in SOLDIER.
• Experienced Protagonist: Cloud was hired by Avalanche to be the team's muscle due to his experience with combat, and most of his dialogue during the tutorial mission consists of him giving combat advice to both Barret and the player. Shown in gameplay as well, as his starting level is six going on seven rather than one.
• Famed In-Story: Becomes this, should he perform enough sidequests. The people of the slums, whom Cloud helps, start recognizing him as "that really powerful and helpful merc" after a time. Cloud also becomes famous in Wall Market after winning the Corneo Cup with Aerith, with a few people calling him "champ" for a while.
• Fake Memories: Rebirth makes it clearer much sooner that he's an Unreliable Narrator to the events of the Nibelheim Incident, with Tifa revealing to Aerith that she doesn't remember Cloud being there at all, and an entire subplot revolves around her trying to confront Cloud about his bizarre recollection of events.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: His First Class uniform has a single pauldron on his left shoulder, extra armor on the left hand then on the right and he has a piercing on his left ear.
• Flash Step:
  • Utilised by Triple Slash if the enemies are within a certain distance. In Rebirth this also extends to him flash stepping into enemies in the air.
  • In the final battle in Remake he attempts to speed-blitz Sephiroth but is countered and disarmed.
  • Rebirth shows that he gets fast enough for this to be one of his regular attacks in punisher mode.
• A Father to His Men: In Rebirth, Cloud proves to be one to the Midgar 7th Infantry during his time posing as a Shinra Trooper in Upper Junon, inspiring such loyalty in the soldiers under him that they insist on fighting alongside him and stick by him even after they figure out he's the enemy spy they've been ordered to capture and/or kill. When they part ways, the soldiers salute Cloud and say it has been an honor serving under him, and that they hope to see him again.
• Gibberish of Love: He has a tendency to become tongue-tied and begins to stutter when he gets distracted by the girls.
  • If Cloud sees Aerith in her fancy red dress at the Wall Market, he's left tongue-tied for a few moments.
    Cloud: That's really... Y-yeah... 'Scuse me...
  • When he first sees Tifa and Aerith in bikinis in Costa del Sol, his speech quickly deteriorates as he tries to play it cool.
    Cloud: It's just hot... in the sun... Speaking of which, you guys should probably put on s-sunscreen.
• The Gift: The games make a good showing of how impressively multi-talented Cloud is at just about anything he puts his mind to when given enough drive to accomplish it; so good that nobody questions that he was an elite SOLDIER. In particular, his swordsmanship skills evolve at a frighteningly fast and efficient pace, going from a rough Mighty Glacier in Remake to more of a Lightning Bruiser in Rebirth, with even Sephiroth acknowledging that Cloud still has plenty of untapped potential.
• Glowing Eyes: His eyes naturally glow due to his mako-enhancements, a trait that several people notice and comment on.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Cloud's best dress when disguising himself to infiltrate Don Corneo's mansion sees him donning a pimped out violet dress. Cloud's projected composed demeanor during that point in the game also adds to the demure appeal, which seems to be partly why Corneo picks Cloud as his "bride".
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Cloud's short golden Spiky Hair that reaches upwards contrasts him with his rival Sephiroth, who has long silver hair that flows down to his waist.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Cloud has blonde hair and is the main hero of the story. Despite being initially rude and aloof, he becomes nicer as the game goes on, and he also proceeds to display a sense of justice— in spite of his initial selfishness and apathy towards the plight of the Planet.
• Hairstyle Inertia: Downplayed, while the Nibelheim flashback shows that he had that same Spiky Hair as a child, he also used to have a ponytail.
• Harmful to Minors: In this version, Sephiroth decided to slice up Cloud's mother Claudia while Cloud could do nothing but watch during his rampage in the Nibelheim Incident. His illusion describing how it felt to kill her combined with a mockery of Claudia's last words sends Cloud into a murderous rage.
• Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: He can wear a Chocobo-themed Hawaiian shirt while in Costa del Sol in Rebirth.
• Heroic BSoD: In Rebirth, Cloud is manipulated by Sephiroth to attack Tifa, making him believe she isn't real. Once Cloud comes to, he is horrified by what he did and falls to his knees screaming her name in anguish, thinking he killed her. While the others try to rescue her from the Weapon, Barret tries to smack some sense into Cloud, but Cloud is so broken he barely responds, though he eventually regains his composure after she is saved and makes a full recovery.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Cloud is The Hero of the story, and it just so happens a BFS is his weapon.
• Heroic Safe Mode: One way to interpret what's happening to Cloud at the end of Rebirth is that his mind has become overwhelmed by trauma, with Aerith's death being the last straw. His brain fills in her passing as a mere departure from the party, and he acts like things are normal to cope with his immense grief. However, given the implication that he's gained the ability to peer between worlds and the vagueness about whether or not some version of Aerith still lives in another reality, it's not so simple as saying he's merely lost his mind.
• Heroic Willpower: Cloud demonstrates this twice in Rebirth by shaking off the influence of Sephiroth and the Black Whispers to save Aerith, first when she falls at the Temple of the Ancients, and later at the Forgotten Capital when the Whispers attempt to force his hand to strike her down.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Despite protesting that he doesn't dance, he's quite good at it — as shown during his dance-off against Andrea at the Honeybee Inn in Remake.
  • Rebirth goes on to confirm that he's quite skilled at the piano, and knows some Shinra Sign Language due to it having been developed from Shinra military hand signals.
  • He gets surprisingly rather into Queen's Blood as a card game, enough to be confident enough to egg other players into taking him on.
  • He's shown to understand sign language, a skill he attributes to his time in the military.
• Icy Blue Eyes: Cloud is aloof and cold at most times, as symbolized by his icy blue eyes — which are said to glow as a result of his Mako enhancement.
• Iconic Outfit: He wears a customized version of the blue/purple SOLDIER outfit with a single shoulder pauldron from the original game. Though he wears other outfits during other story sequences, that always remains his default one.
• Iconic Starter Equipment: Cloud's Buster Sword is his most iconic weapon, and the one pre-rendered cutscenes always show him using in both Remake and Rebirth. Remake even gives it Magikarp Power properties so that it stays viable even after the acquisition of other swords, whereas in the original Final Fantasy VII you'll ditch it and never look back as soon as you get another sword. Rebirth has you starting with only the Buster Sword too, with all the previous weapons that could be acquired in Remake being inexplicably gone and Rebirth similarly has mechanics that allow it to be a viable weapon choice for the rest of the game.
• I'm Crying, but I Don't Know Why: When Cloud meets with Aerith on the way to Sector 6, he is struck by one of his headaches as he watches Aerith walking ahead of him. Unlike times before, the vision he experiences is not shown, but heavily implied to be related to Aerith's fated death. Cloud clutches his head, his breath hitches, and he suddenly sheds a Single Tear. He's left both surprised and bewildered, not understanding why he just cried.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: Tends to happen when getting close to Jenova or Sephiroth:
  • In Hojo's lab, just after meeting Red XIII, getting too close to Jenova triggers something in Cloud, causing him to stumble forward slowly towards the elevator before collapsing. During this time, Cloud is Hearing Voices of Sephiroth, telling him that "they have come again."
    Cloud: Je... No... Oh... Ah... Mo... ther... [collapses]
  • When facing Sephiroth in front of Jenova's tank, Cloud has a similar reaction, stumbling towards Sephiroth while clutching his left arm.
  • While exploring Shinra Manor, Cloud stumbles on a room where Hojo is keeping samples of "S" cells, almost certainly Sephiroth cells. Just entering the room causes another mental episode, stumbling towards the containers while muttering that he's "nearly there." Tifa has to help him back out, and the migraine subsides as soon as he leaves the room.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: As a little boy, Cloud despised being compared to the other boys in his village, seeing them as stupid and immature, and when many of them also left town to find work, he made sure to point out that he is "not like them" and had loftier goals in mind for himself. He also never misses a chance to point out that he wasn't just a SOLDIER; he was a First Class. In other words, he comes off as someone who desperately clings to the parts of his identity he's proud of, and isn't at all confident in himself otherwise, trying to use his title in place of his lack of social graces. Unfortunately for him, this is one of the strings Sephiroth is most easily able to pull, as Cloud's need for validation is so strong that he will consider even the most outlandish words at least a little. In Rebirth, Sephiroth is able to gaslight him into thinking Tifa is an imposter because a part of him could not believe he was wrong about her not surviving her wound, despite her showing him the scar she got from it and meeting the doctor that treated her.
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • The Twin Stinger in Remake is initially the best-balanced stat sword that Cloud has. It starts with 4 materia slots and pretty decent stats, and it's the final weapon Cloud unlocks normally. When you get it, it's a pretty good weapon for its base stats. But by the time you've gotten all of the skill tomes and maxed out your weapons, the Twin Stinger is inferior to the Buster Sword, Cloud's starting weapon, in every category except extra MP, and not by much.
  • The Slipstream Saber in Rebirth has solid all-around stats, multiple materia slots no matter the weapon level and the useful Counterstance ability, allowing Cloud to keep up if the player didn't get a whole lot of levels or side quests. After maxing out manuscripts, it excels only in its counterattack power next to the rest of his weapons.
• Insistent Terminology: Whenever someone refers to him as a member of SOLDIER, Cloud immediately chimes in with "Ex-SOLDIER."
• I Reject Your Reality: One way to interpret Rebirth's Gainax Ending is that Aerith truly was killed, and Cloud does not take her death very well. He believes she was just unconscious after their fight against Sephiroth, and is just deluding himself that she later wakes up to see Cloud and the others off as they journey on to the Northern Crater while she stays behind to continue praying for Holy on safer grounds. What makes this situation ambiguous is the fact that no burial scene is shown, and the other party members' reactions are carefully left open to interpretation. Notably, only Cloud interacts with Aerith at the end while the others don't seem to acknowledge her presence, except for Red XIII and possibly Barret.
• I See Them, Too: At first, the Arbiters of Fate are only visible to Aerith, but when she touches Cloud, he also starts seeing them.
• Improperly Paranoid: In Rebirth, Cloud is constantly goaded by Sephiroth's apparitions into believing that Tifa is a Jenova impostor (due to Cloud's belief that she was fatally wounded by Sephiroth), eventually culminating in him throwing her into a pool of mako at Gongaga.
• Instant Expert: Cloud is inexplicably good at dancing after a single practice session with the Honey Bee Girls, and is able to keep up with a skilled dancer like Andrea with little issue.
• Jack of All Stats: Cloud is fast and strong but not as fast as Tifa who can pull off quick and powerful combos and has a much better maneuverability to avoid incoming attacks, yet he also hits harder per hit and outshines her when it comes to dealing raw damage against multiple enemies at once. He can take a decent amount of damage but not to the extent of Barret who has higher defense and HP to withstand a lot of punishment before going down. He can also deal a fair amount of magic damage but not as high as Aerith who possesses a very high Magic Attack. Despite all that, Cloud does have his Stance System which allows him to switch between Force and Finesse on the fly, thus enabling him to stay on the playing field. By using different weapons, Cloud can also focus on certain areas, allowing him to fill any role in the party. He won't be the best at many of these, but he's an extremely versatile party member.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: His lack of social graces and insistence that he's Only in It for the Money make him come off as particularly abrasive, but he'll always turn around to do the right thing, even if he has to make up an excuse for it. He also softens up noticeably from spending time with Tifa, Jessie, and Aerith. Rebirth allows the player to play up the "Heart of Gold" aspect depending on dialogue choices, especially around Aerith and Tifa, and to a lesser extent Barret and the other party members. Cloud being, well, Cloud, he can still easily put his foot in his mouth, but at other times he can be surprisingly tactful and encouraging, displaying a great deal of empathy. Even when unsuccessful, there are multiple occasions where his teammates appreciate the fact that he tries.
• Lethal Joke Weapon: The Nail Bat has poor stats all-around, but its Batter Up! unique heavy attack is very effective against enemy types that go into a pressured state after a certain damage threshold. Because it's the strongest single non-ability hit in the game, it can stun-lock them over and over until staggered. This can turn certain fights like Fat Chocobo into a complete joke.
• Lightning Bruiser: He's fast, strong, and can take quite a lot of punishment before going down. This is best showcased in the cutscenes, particularly the one before the final battle with Sephiroth in Remake, where he acrobatically leaps through the collapsing ruins of a skyscraper and effortlessly cleaves through massive chunks of rubble a la Advent Children.
• Living Emotional Crutch: While he isn't quite aware of it, Cloud is one to Tifa. As the closest connection to their shared childhood, he is somebody she needs to keep going and to live for. This is best shown when Tifa falls into the Lifestream in Rebirth, where she is bombarded with memories of their lives together and she pleads to Cloud that she needs him, and that her greatest fear is losing him to Sephiroth.
• Loners Are Freaks: As a child he was anti-social and constantly got into fights with Tifa's friends because of his All of the Other Reindeer status and Inferiority Superiority Complex, making him something of a pariah in Nibelheim.
• Magic Knight: Most of Cloud's swords allow him to fight with magic and swords with equal measure, while the Mythril Saber is the most effective at boosting his magic at the cost of physical strength. His sword beams specifically deal magic damage, making him one of the few characters in the party who can consistently deal both physical and magical damage.
• Manchild: While he tries to come across as a gruff Super-Soldier badass making it on his own, often his facade slips to show that he is really an insecure dolt with loneliness issues more akin to a moody teenager than a young man, which is appropriate because he mentally is one.
• Manly Tears: He's seen shedding these as he cradles Aerith after she's seemingly killed by Sephiroth at the end of Rebirth, though things get a lot murkier in the following scenes.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The name "Cloud Strife" essentially describes this young man's conflicted outlook and his inner struggles, having lived a life full of uncertainties and turmoil. For all his bravado and physical prowess, he remains unsure of himself and doesn't have a clear path of his own, often looking to others for direction and the strength to keep moving forward.
  • In gameplay terms, starting with Rebirth, Cloud Strife is the foremost anti-air specialist of the close combatants, with the easiest time getting into the air as well as moves that work best while in the air, including one that only works in mid-air.
• Mighty Glacier: His Punisher Mode makes him into this. Cloud attacks deal much more damage here than in Operator Mode, both in terms of raw damage and the number of hits per attack. In addition, guarding in Punisher Mode makes him counter enemy melee attacks, he's harder to stagger, and he takes slightly less damage. As a trade-off, Cloud's speed plummets to a crawl, and he can't block long-range attacks anymore. A combat roll will also take him back to Operator Mode so that it can't be used as a movement option.
• Missing Mom: Cloud's mother Claudia was killed by Sephiroth during his rampage through Nibelheim five years prior, which the villain uses to taunt and torment him.
• Mistaken for Flirting: In Rebirth, once the team arrives in in Costa del Sol and gets changed into swimsuits, Yuffie teasingly asks Cloud if he's "captivated by [her] bodacious beach bod". If Cloud sarcastically replies that's correct, Yuffie assumes he's actually hitting on her.
• Moment of Weakness: While usually a badass, antisocial, Ex-Soldier ready to persevere through the harshest of trials, nearly killing Tifa in the Gongaga reactor in a mako-induced gaslighting by Sephiroth causes him to crumble. Afterwards, he cannot bear to talk to her when she wakes up until she asks him to stay and for the first time opens up about his fears of losing himself to the degradation and his conflicting memories.
• Momma's Boy: He was raised as a single child by a single mother, so she means an awful lot to him. This is also shown in Cloud's personality where he has a lot of social issues from not having a strong male figure in his life such as his inferiority complex. It also makes him spontaneously both susceptible and resistant to Sephiroth's manipulations. He quite easily can be manipulated to refer to Jenova as a "mother", but, unlike the other Sephiroth clones, he is always reminded of his actual mother when Sephiroth appears to him personally. Sephiroth has to resort to mocking Cloud about Claudia's death to manipulate him instead.
• Mr. Fanservice: Cloud is a well-built Pretty Boy with a Troubled, but Cute appeal. Even In-Universe several characters tend to pine or lust after him. In Rebirth one of his beachwear costume options is a pair of swimming trunks that leaves him shirtless.
• Murder Is the Best Solution:
  • When Johnny rats out Jessie after being captured by Shinra security, Cloud is perfectly willing to kill him to stop Johnny from jeopardizing all of Avalanche. When Tifa objects, Cloud settles for just telling Johnny to leave Midgar and never come back.
  • At the Temple of the Ancients, Cloud stops holding back and kills the wounded soldiers and tries to kill the Turks after their battle. It gets so bad Tifa has to give him a Cooldown Hug to spare them and get them back on track.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: DownplayedTrope. Cloud does have an athletic, muscular physique, but on the lean side of things, built around endurance and stamina instead of raw strength, which is how real-life soldiers are supposed to be. He technically lacks the size and bulk necessary to be able to swing around the Buster Sword the way he does, let alone heft it. Justified by the fact that he has gained Super-Strength from being subjected to advanced Super-Soldier experimentation.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In Rebirth, Cloud, being manipulated by Sephiroth into believing Tifa is an imposter and not real, attacks her during a mako induced haze, causing her to drop into the Lifestream and be eaten by a Weapon. Once Cloud comes to, he's horrified by what he did and shouts her name in grief thinking he killed her. Once she's safely returned by the Weapon, he takes it upon himself to watch over her until she recovers and immediately wants to inform the others, implicitly because he doesn't want to be forgiven.
• Mysterious Past: Cloud's past is one of the biggest mysteries in Remake, and it stays that way for all of Part 1 due to Cloud's standoffish personality. All that the player is told for certain is that he grew up in the same town as Tifa, but he left at some point to join SOLDIER. Whatever happened in the years since then he refuses to elaborate on, but it's clear that something (or several somethings) occurred that made him leave Shinra... and left a few scars on his psyche.
• New Meat: In Remake, he's a recent arrival in Midgar, and the other Avalanche members aren't too sure of what to make of his aloof persona, with Barret being the most frustrated by Cloud's aloof attitude and openly distrusting him during the entire first bombing mission. Cloud slowly manages to win them over through the course of the game.
• Never Be Hurt Again: Cloud's childhood angst over being the odd kid in Nibelheim has caused him to become antisocial and withdrawn in an effort to avoid being hurt by his ties with others again. Unfortunately, this did nothing for him but create a vicious cycle of loneliness: lashing out and then experiencing even more rejection and hurt. These problems got significantly worse when he tried to stop a naïve and heartbroken Tifa from scaling Mt. Nibel in a fruitless effort to find her deceased mother, failed, and got blamed for the disastrous outcome by Tifa's fair-weather friends. It's heavily implied that Cloud subconsciously knows but represses the true memory of when he lost his best friend, Zack, and is scared of losing the new bonds he has made the same way. His new friends, Aerith in particular, take great strides in opening up his gates despite the pain he might feel because of them.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: Noble to Barret’s Roguish. Cloud is a formally trained ex-military whose every action is tempered with discipline. Barret is a self-taught rebel fighter who revels in being as reckless and in-your-face as possible, not caring much for any long-term consequences.
• No Social Skills: He is rather awkward around others. He tries to put up a cool and disinterested front to hide this, but most people see right through it. Aerith in particular has a lot of fun teasing him about it. That said, he is making a genuine effort to try to be more open with others as of Rebirth and feels bad over his lack of communication, particularly with his party members.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: The words "not interested" are tied with him for a reason. Cloud makes it clear to Barret that he is only working with them for money and is not a full-blown supporter of Avalanche's cause. In fact, he is openly dismissive towards Barret's passionate speeches about the evils of Shinra and how the Planet is dying.
• Not So Above It All:
  • Gradually, Cloud's aloof attitude is chipped away, and he'll eventually become a bit more willing to engage with others even when it's something strange or something he doesn't outwardly express enjoyment or interest in.
  • During the opening bombing mission, Cloud keeps any and all banter to a minimum with the other members of Avalanche. As time goes on, however, he begins to joke with them more and even smiles at their antics.
  • While he is very much not interested in the shenanigans of Wall Market, he absolutely will kill it on the dance floor when required to. And he knows he pulled off that dress.
    Cloud: Nailed it, I know. Thank you. Moving on.
  • When he gets turned into a Moogle by the Moogle Merchant in Rebirth, he actually has fun with it and even adds "Kupo" to the end of his sentence when asked if he enjoyed it.
  • While he knows that Tifa and Aerith prefer to be seen as their own people and not for their attractiveness, their beauty often puts him in a state of Distracted by the Sexy. In Remake, he is left dumbfounded for a while after seeing Aerith's red dress, and in Rebirth, seeing Tifa and Aerith in bikinis leaves him stammering and staring and can barely pass it off. During Johnny's sidequest, Yuffie suggests cloning party members for extra hands, and Cloud immediately vetoes everyone else but cannot begin to form an answer when she suggests Tifa, and in fact never vetoes the idea in the end.
  • If he's accompanied by Aerith during their first visit at the Gold Saucer, he plays along with her when she pretends to be a race caller at the Chocobo Square.
    Aerith: This is some kinda race today, folks. In all my years in the booth, only seen couple this close! So, Cloud, which bird do you think is gonna take home the win?
    Cloud: Well, Aerith, considering their plumage and breeding, I think the choice is clear.
• Not So Stoic: Cloud attempts to maintain an air of disinterest or aloofness as often as he can. He only truly loses his cool when Sephiroth shows up.
  • Cloud encountering Sephiroth after the reactor bombing causes Cloud to deny what he's seeing is real, especially since Cloud says that he killed Sephiroth with his own hands. When Sephiroth insults Cloud's mother and reminds Cloud that he killed her, Cloud screams "You bastard!" and goes for an overhead swing. When it's revealed to be all just an illusion, Cloud quickly pulls himself together.
  • When he encounters Sephiroth in Hojo's laboratory, Cloud completely loses it, screams at the top his lungs, and charges Sephiroth in a blind panic.
  • While he's normally brusque with Yuffie, it's shown with his interactions he can act like the aloof big brother who occasionally plays along with her childish antics. Their "date" at the Gold Saucer is a big example of this.
• Oblivious to Love: In Rebirth, he often doesn't realize when girls are flirting with him, or if he does he brushes it off. Aerith particularly teases him very often and is forthright with her interest in him, but her flirtations typically go over his head.
  • When helping models design beachwear, Aerith asks Cloud what kind of bikini he'd be interested in; Cloud responds with an explanation of how he'd want something non-absorbent and allowing for full range of motion, just in case you'd have to fight underwater in it.
  • If Cloud is alone during the Gold Saucer date sequence in Chapter 8 and runs into Aerith, she blatantly hints that she'd like to explore the park with someone. Ironically, in this instance it causes Cloud to get jealous, meaning he's unknowingly jealous of himself.
  • Aerith herself lampshades this if she is accompanying Cloud during the same sequence.
    Aerith: You can be pretty dense when it comes to [this] kinda stuff. [...] You, young man... still have a lot to learn.
• Occult Blue Eyes: In several cutscenes, as well as certain times in-game when the lighting is dim enough, Cloud's eyes have a noticeable, eerie glow due to his mako exposure, which is one of the physical traits of members of SOLDIER.
• Ominous Message from the Future: After meeting Aerith in Remake, Cloud has repeated visions of future events that have not yet occurred, such as the Sector 7 plate collapse and Aerith's predestined death.
• Only in It for the Money: If Cloud's being paid to do a job, he'll do it to the best of his ability, but that's as far as the relationship between him and anyone who hires him goes. Much like in the original game, he gradually grows out of this as Cloud finds reasons to fight other than money.
  • As Cloud makes clear multiple times throughout the opening bombing mission, he's "not interested" in anything that Avalanche plans to do or why they're doing it. He's only there because he's been promised money for it. This attitude initially gets him cut from the Sector 5 bombing mission, forcing the Arbiters of Fate to intercede by injuring Jessie so that Cloud has to fill in for her.
  • On completing a few sidequests, an NPC might casually ask him to do something else, only for Cloud to ask for more money to do it. Notably, after visiting a woman's grave to pay respects in her husband's stead, Cloud tells the old man to bring the graveyard's key back to the kid Cloud bought it from. The old man asks Cloud to do it for him, but Cloud says it'll cost five thousand Gil to do it. The old man immediately grumbles about how stingy Cloud is being.
  • Even when a group of Leaf House orphans asks Cloud to defeat a "toad king" that's been kidnapping them, Cloud still charges the kids money to rescue the others. However, Cloud tells the kids he's "running a special on toad king jobs" when they ask this of him, and only charges the kids three gil.
  • Later on, he doesn't quibble too much about Aerith teasing that she'll pay him with 'one date' for helping her escape Reno and Shinra from the Turks. The number of sidequests both she and other characters rope Cloud into further cement his Defrosting Ice King persona.
  • When the plate collapse crushes Seventh Heaven, Barret and Tifa briefly discuss rebuilding it. When Tifa asks if Cloud will help, he quips 'for the right price', which comes off more like an in-joke at this point, since he and the group are becoming True Companions at this point in the game.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • During the Nibelheim flashback in Rebirth, Cloud is portrayed as remarkably chattier and peppier than usual, and treats Tifa with less familiarity, which is a hint that Cloud's version of events are not entirely reliable.
  • Witnessing Roche's transformation into a Robed Man leaves Cloud visibly shaken and on the verge of another breakdown, not helped by Roche's ominous last words to him that there is no escape from the degradation. He only snaps out of it because Aerith reassures him with faithful confidence that he will never succumb to that situation.
  • When going through the Temple of the Ancients, Cloud becomes noticeably colder and obsessed with reaching the Black Materia. He cuts down a SOLDIER pleading for his life without any hesitation and almost does the same thing to the Turk's Elena, callously shrugs off an emotional pep talk from Aerith, and can be heard quietly chuckling during the fight with the Demon Walls. It's indicative that he's being influenced by Sephiroth's will and personality.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: While he mostly wields his BFS with two hands, he's also shown to be more than capable of brandishing it with only one, and there are more than a few moves and combos that have him utilizing just his dominant right hand. There's also his iconic Victory Pose where he casually twirls his huge blade with one arm. When forced to engage combat while riding a motorcycle, he relies solely on one hand to fight while using the other to steer the bike.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot:
  • Cloud may be blunt and sarcastic, but other times when he tries to be genuine he can be incredibly tactless. His interactions with his party members showcase this throughout Remake and Rebirth, because he's a socially awkward young man with zero experience in relationships with the occasionally charming responses, and lost five formative years of development, he has a lot of difficulty expressing his true feelings. Probably the best example of this is a disparaging comment he makes about Zack to Aerith while the team is in Gongaga, referring to him as a "loser" for not keeping in touch with Aerith or having the decency to end their relationship to allow her to move on ^note Aerith suspects Zack is dead but has no knowledge of what happened. Meanwhile, Cloud has severe memory issues and at this point doesn't remember Zack or the circumstances of his death; while meant well, it's an extremely tactless and inappropriate comment for the situation.
  • Another example in Junon: while conversing with Tifa, she picks up on his lack of interest in the topic she's reminiscing about, and he admits he isn't. He quickly realises how this sounds and expresses a genuine willingness to listen anyway, but Tifa is naturally hurt and doesn't want to continue. Cloud's reaction as he lingers outside her door shows he knows how badly he screwed up.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: He's a man who wears a blue SOLDIER uniform which contrasts with Girly Girl Aerith who wears a pink dress.
• Playing with Fire: Starts off with Fire materia - a contrast to how he had Thunder and Ice in the original, but in line with the original Dissidia duology.
• Please Wake Up: After driving off Sephiroth in the Forgotten Capital, Cloud heads towards where Aerith is lying down and asks her to wake up. Unlike most examples of the trope, she opens her eyes and smiles, though it's left unclear whether or not this Aerith is a figment of Cloud's imagination or the one he ended up saving within a branched timeline.
• Practical Taunt: Pressing and holding down the attack button during his Punisher combo string causes him to interrupt his combo with an overhead Sword Plant which naturally doesn't do that much damage and looks more like he's showing off but doing so temporarily increases his physical damage. This attack also flinches foes that can be flinched by Cloud's Focused Thrust, making it an alternative if players don't have ATB for Focused Thrust or want to save ATB.
• Pretty Boy: Cloud is quite a beautiful man, having several effeminate features. This makes it easy for him to pass as a woman while crossdressing.
• The Promise: Before he decided to leave Nibelheim to become a SOLDIER, Tifa had him promise that when he achieved his dream, he would come and save her if she was ever in a pickle. So far, he's kept that promise.
• The Protagonist: Cloud is the main character of the story, being the character the player controls most often outside of battle and the one the story centers around.
• The Quiet One: He rarely speaks without being spoken to, though he talks a bit more in combat. He becomes more talkative as the story progresses, and by Rebirth he even participates in banter and often talks to NPCs.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The stoic, introverted, (initially) aloof, and distant Blue to Barret’s brash, loud, and hot-headed Red.
• Renaissance Man: Cloud is a ridiculously multi-talented individual who frequently catches the interest of professionals in their respective fields due to his latent potential. Outside of being a first-class fighter, Cloud is also a skilled motorcyclist, dancer, pianist, Queen's Blood player, gamer, and Chocobo jockey. Parodied in that, somehow, he can understand and translate Shani the Chocobo. Even the game itself calls it inexplicable.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: In Rebirth, after nearly killing Tifa by accident and her miraculous survival, Cloud does surmise correctly that it feels like there's multiple people inside of him and that he's not really sure who he is. But because he lacks the bigger context to Jenova's cells being in him or all SOLDIER, never mind why Sephiroth is able to mess with and control him, he thinks it's entirely because of SOLDIER cell degradation like with Broden, only a short distance from the truth.
• Sanity Has Advantages: The game often demonstrates that a mentally sound Cloud is at his best in both combat and leadership. This is essentially why Sephiroth prefers corroding his sanity with a combination of taunts, threats, and gaslighting. It comes to a head at the end of Rebirth when Sephiroth's attempt to drive Cloud insane with rage by killing Aerith is ruined once the latter perceives her as alive instead.
• Sanity Slippage: In Remake, it is shown several times he has a shaky relationship with the abject reality thanks to Sephiroth's manipulations, often slipping into a state where what he sees and what is real gets hard to tell. It steadily gets worse in Rebirth, to the point where his friends cannot get though to him and he falls for Sephiroth's illusions despite them trying to help him. By the end, he is seeing and doing things on his own even when relatively lucid.
• Self-Serving Memory: Upon entering the inn at the rebuilt Nibelheim, Cloud begins to remember who Zack is and that they were both at Nibelheim 5 years ago. He remembers them both being SOLDIERs at Nibelheim, and then later when he and Tifa pass the spot where they fell into the river after the bridge collapsed years ago, his memory changes the soldier that was swept away to being Zack. As the game heavily hints, this is all Cloud's mind desperately filling in the blanks in his memories that still lets him continue to believe that he was ever a SOLDIER and not just one of the grunts that accompanied Sephiroth and Zack to Nibelheim.
• She Is Not My Girlfriend:
  • In Remake he gets asked multiple times by people what his relationship with Tifa is, and his response is usually a hasty "we're just friends". When he's teamed up with Aerith, he sometimes has to point out they weren't a couple. It gets inverted when Tifa asks what his relationship with Aerith is, though he doesn't answer that time.
  • Rebirth adds another instance of this, whereupon seeing Jessie's portrait on the Gold Saucer theatre wall in Chapter 8's date sequence, Aerith (if selected as Cloud's companion) will ask if Cloud was involved with her, which he denies. Aerith comments that it might not be as clear as Cloud makes out, since he "can be pretty dense about that sorta stuff". There is also an aversion in this same sequence; if Cloud is being accompanied by one of the girls and speaks to Madam M in Chocobo Square, she will tell Cloud to go and spend more time with his girlfriend. Since Cloud's response is a dismissive "Whatever" instead of denying it, it can also be read that by this point he's tired of correcting people.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Cloud has some signs of PTSD. Seeing a burning building acts as a trauma trigger and he flashes back to another burning town. He's also shown to be a very light sleeper, with even a small noise causing him to not only wake up but also become instantly alert and ready to fight.
• Shoot the Dog: He comes very close to killing Johnny after the latter blabs about Jessie to the Shinra soldiers, knowing full well his loose lips will pose trouble for AVALANCHE. It's only on Tifa's insistence that Cloud spares him.
  • He does this again when he attempts to kill a defeated and surrendering Reno in the church, but the Whispers intervene and save him.
  • Becomes a recurring problem in Rebirth to indicate Sephiroth's influence is growing. At Gongaga, Cloud adopts Sephiroth's sword stance before killing a group of mooks far more brutally than usual and begins repeating Sephiroth's favorite ominous phrase 'it's not death, it's a homecoming' before slaughtering someone.
• Skyward Scream: Has this in Rebirth when Cloud attacks Tifa and nearly kills her at Gongaga due to Sephiroth manipulating his mind. When Cloud regains his composure, he screams her name at the top of his lungs in despair, thinking he killed her.
• Snark-to-Snark Combat: As shown by the demo and the opening mission, Cloud gets this dynamic with Barret quite a bit. This is thanks to their Teeth-Clenched Teamwork, owing to Cloud being Only in It for the Money whereas Barret is doing it for the sake of the planet. He occasionally gets into this with Aerith, but he is always on the losing end.
• Socially Awkward Hero: What Cloud truly is. Despite putting on the facade of a cold, distant mercenary, he's essentially someone who's not good at socializing. This is often demonstrated during Rebirth.
• Spiky Hair: Cloud naturally has the spiky hair that he's famous for, but not many characters bring attention to it in Remake. Rebirth does have some characters commenting on how his hair resembles a Chocobo.
• Stance System: Cloud has two fighting styles in Remake to switch between in combat. The first is Operator Mode, which is more mobile and defensive, allowing him to block and dodge attacks. The second is Punisher Mode, which hits harder and allows him to counter melee attacks but slows down his movement and prevents him from blocking ranged attacks. Rebirth gives him prime mode, an even harder hitting stance that requires ATB to enter.
• Starting a New Life: The reason Cloud came to Midgar in the first place was to start over as a mercenary. This is why Barret's small crew was able to afford his services, and why he spends a good chunk of the game doing odd jobs in the slums; he's trying to build up his credibility. If the player invests in the sidequests, then he builds up a good reputation as a trustworthy merc in Sectors 7 and 5.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: Cloud is still wearing a modified SOLDIER First Class outfit even though he's no longer working for Shinra.
• The Stoic: Cloud is very calm, collected and almost always keeps his emotions in check; it's even an elaborate part of his mercenary image that he tries to cultivate and becomes known for. Given how absurd some of the things that surround him can be, however, the facade can occasionally falter.
• Strong and Skilled: He's a Super-Soldier imbued with mako enhancements that give him enough Super-Strength to casually wield a BFS. And he's noted for being a skilled and graceful swordsman despite the size of his weapon.
• Strong as They Need to Be:
  • His swords. One example is during an early cutscene where he fails to draw his sword when the blade gets blocked by a concrete doorway... yet much later, Cloud is seen cutting down giant rocks, train parts, and other heavily sturdy objects like they're made of paper. Possibly justified, at least when he does that during the final confrontation with the Whisper Harbinger and Sephiroth. Said Final Boss happens in a Singularity, where the laws of physics are distorted.
  • His physical capabilities also seem to change depending on the scene. During the raid on the reactor at the very beginning of the game, at one point the catwalk Cloud is on collapses and he's able to jump up about 6 feet to safety without any issue, but later on when a bridge collapses beneath him again, he isn't able to jump nearly as far and only avoids falling because Aerith sticks out her staff for him to grab onto.
  • How much stronger Cloud is than the rest of the party changes from scene to scene. During fights with the Turks in particular he doesn't come across as any stronger than the other members of the cast, while some others like the Sephiroth Reborn fight make him out to be stronger than the rest combined.
• Strong Family Resemblance: A flashback shows that he looks like a male clone of his mom, hair shape and all. His cross-dressing self in Wall Market could almost pass as a younger version of Claudia.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Cloud tries to cultivate the image of The Stoic, often coming across as rude, cold, and abrasive. He's also quite dismissive, and quickly shuts down most conversations unrelated to his work. However, cracks in his cool-headed persona show themselves more often than not. As the game progresses, Cloud shows his more heroic traits, as well as genuine emotion. He can even be quite gentle, such as when he holds Biggs' hand after the latter receives mortal injuries, and based on three optional scenes, either gets into a heart-to-heart talk with Barret (where they bury their past animosity), embraces Tifa when she cries, or comforts Aerith when she visits him in his dream.
• Super Breeding Program: Completing the trifecta of people Hojo considers viable candidates for superior offspring, the Hojo AI informs him with his trophy that he has begun compartmentalizing his data for offspring creation. Worryingly, his choice in words implies he has already started to work on it....
• Super-Soldier: Cloud claims to be a former SOLDIER First Class, an elite task force of super-soldiers engineered by Professor Hojo, and these claims are backed up by his superhuman strength, durability, and agility. However, Hojo reveals that Cloud was never in SOLDIER... before the Whispers whisk him away to prevent him from revealing Cloud's true past too early.
• Sword Beam: The Blade Burst attack, granted by the Mythril Saber, has Cloud slam his sword into the ground and send shockwaves of energy forward, based on his Blade Beam Limit in the original game. He can also fire arcs of Razor Wind from his sword while riding a motorcycle.
• Sword Plant: In both Remake and Rebirth, his charged attack in Punisher Mode has him planting his sword in the ground, dealing high damage while also giving him the berserk status effect for a few seconds.
• Tearful Smile: Cloud cries while cradling Aerith in his arms after she appears to be mortally wounded by Sephiroth in Rebirth. She then opens her eyes and touches Cloud's cheek, telling him it is alright. Cloud responds by calling out her name with a relieved smile through his tears.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: In the opening mission, with Barret. Cloud holds Barret's mission and obsession with the planet in contempt, while Barret is openly suspicious of Cloud's skills and loyalty.
  Cloud: Should've asked for more money.
• This Is Gonna Suck: During Rebirth, this is Cloud's default reaction to realizing he is going to deal with one of his headaches from Midgar, like Kyrie, Roche, and Johnny.
• Three-Point Landing: Often strikes this pose when landing, as his BFS means he has to distribute the weight to one side to compensate.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Cloud suffers from frequent migraines, which are often accompanied by hallucinations of Sephiroth, flashbacks to his traumatic past, and visions of possible future events. One way to interpret his continuing to see Aerith alive and well after a version of her dies in his arms is because he's fallen to madness, unable to accept her loss, though evidence suggests that there's a lot more going on due to the existence of branching timelines and the fact that Red XIII also acknowledges Aerith's presence, albeit in a subtle and ambiguous manner.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Downplayed. In Rebirth, while Cloud is still grappling with Sephiroth's influence, his true self—being a shy and awkward guy—starts to emerge more around his friends. He even begins to tease back and comfort others. He also joins in on the fun with Queen's Blood card game, alongside Red, during the cruise.
• Trauma Button: Cloud's personality undergoes a radical shift anytime Sephiroth enters the picture; going from cold and aloof to alarmed, terrified, disbelieving, and wrathful. His first response is to attack Sephiroth the moment he appears before him, usually screaming at the top of his lungs (and often to little effect).
  Cloud: Sephiroth?! You bastard!!
• Troubled, but Cute: Cloud’s aloof and surly attitude doesn’t stop women from swooning over him.
• True Sight: One way to interpret what's going on with Cloud at the end of Rebirth is that he's been granted the ability to see past the veil between realities thanks to being the only one to successfully breach Fate's constraints and create an Alternate Timeline where Aerith lives after successfully blocking Sephiroth's killing blow, shown by the tell-tale rainbow effects surrounding him as he cradles the living Aerith in his arms (the very same effects that occurred when Zack made the crucial choice to help either Biggs or Cloud), whereas the other party members remain "locked" in their world's constraints. This is further hinted at when Cloud looks up and sees a giant scar in the sky while recalling the words said to him by the version of Aerith he met at the start of Chapter 14, something the rest of his party members could not.
• Tsundere: He's arrogant, rude, abrasive, and downright stubborn... but if you're a kind soul who needs aid, he'll help you with your problems despite his incessant complaints about money, and in the case of Avalanche or particularly Aerith and Tifa, show hints of a deeper kindness buried inside his crude exterior.
• Unable to Cry: During especially traumatic events like seeing Jessie die in Remake, Cloud can be seen trying to feel sadness and working up the tears to grieve, but is unable to. It's heavily implied to be a defense mechanism, as being reminded of the last time he cried at Zack's death would undo his mental state and reduce him to the hollow state he was before. Sephiroth taunts him for it in Rebirth, showing the destruction he went through in Midgar could not elicit a response other than hatred and asking Cloud why he cannot shed tears. At the end of Rebirth, thanks to what appears to be a timeline distortion, Cloud sees one version of Aerith die, causing him to break down and shed tears of sorrow, while another distortion shows Aerith seemingly surviving her fate, eliciting a Tears of Joy reaction from Cloud instead.
• Unknown Rival: Has this dynamic with Roche, who's utterly obsessed with fighting Cloud in both Remake and Rebirth, while Cloud only sees him as an annoyance and just another opponent to defeat.
• Unreliable Narrator: He's this In-Universe when he recounts the Nibelheim Incident at the beginning of Rebirth. While she doesn't correct him during his retelling, Tifa confides in Aerith afterwards that a few things in Cloud's retellings don't add up. Tifa does prod Cloud about it later, but Cloud is shown to have a Self-Serving Memory about the incident. Upon entering the inn at the rebuilt Nibelheim, Cloud begins to remember who Zack is and that they came to town together, but Cloud's mind fills in the blanks in such a way that his memories let Cloud continue to believe his own version of the events.
• The Unsmile: In Rebirth Chapter 10, Cloud can try giving Aerith a reassuring smile as she gives a speech in Cosmo Canyon. What actually appears on his face is an awkward grin that looks like a cross between a Slasher Smile and a lecherous smirk. Aerith is not won over.
• Weapon Twirling: His Victory Pose has him twirling his BFS over his head (with one arm) before sheathing it across his back.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Cloud gets annoyed and incredulous when Elmyra and the party suggest they shouldn't try and rescue Aerith from Shinra right away, given everyone is well aware of what Shinra is capable of at this point.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: When the mako-induced glow in his eyes is not scaring people, he gets this reaction due to their unusual color.
• What You Are in the Dark: An early scene in chapter 3 of Remake designed to endear players to the character faster than the original shows Cloud taking care of some of Don Corneo's men who go asking around about Avalanche, and he never mentions it to anybody else looking for credit or worship. This comes after spending a whole day being stand-offish and abrasive with the team, showing he cares more about them than he lets on. Eventually, everybody starts to see that the "tough guy" act is but a front, and that Cloud is a decent person on the inside.
• When He Smiles: Cloud rarely smiles throughout Remake, though it's merely because he tries to maintain an aloof, cold persona. When he lets his mask slip, he's prone to cracking genuine, friendly smiles, and others will frequently take notice of it and encourage it.
• White Male Lead: Cloud is the white caucasian handsome male protagonist in a noticeably diverse main cast, with a black man (Barret), an Asian woman (Yuffie), three women (Tifa, Aerith, Yuffie), and two non-humans (Red XIII and Cait Sith).
• Wholesome Crossdresser: There's no other way to say it: The man looks gorgeous in drag. Even funnier is his outright refusal to disguise his voice, and the subsequent times that everyone around him gets fooled despite it.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Badass former SOLDIER Cloud admits "Ghosts aren't my thing" and displays reluctance to go into Train Graveyard, having to be encouraged by his female companions holding onto both of his arms and guiding him in.
• Would Hit a Girl: Played for Drama. In Rebirth, Sephiroth mind controls Cloud into slaughtering Shinra's personnel at the Temple of the Ancients, and almost kills Elena in cold blood if not for Tifa stopping him. Later, once Sephiroth gets his hands on the Black Materia and gives it to Cloud to give it back to him, Tifa tries to stop Cloud again, but this time, he coldly shoves her to the ground due to Sephiroth's hold over him getting stronger. Sephiroth then orders Cloud to strike down Aerith to get the Black Materia, though before he does, Aerith willingly relinquishes it and Cloud's Heroic Willpower kicks in and he regains control of himself before allowing Sephiroth to use him to hurt her further.
• You Killed My Father: Sephiroth murdered his mother Claudia and even brags about it, fueling Cloud's hatred of him.
• Zombie Infectee: In a manner of speaking. Like with many other SOLDIERs, Cloud had been exposed to Jenova cells which contribute to his super human abilities. However, these cells also make him susceptible to Sephiroth's control, and are slowly turning him into a Sephiroth Clone. What's worse is Cloud seems to be in denial over how the cellular degradation is effecting him, possibly as a result Sephiroth's influence. This is arguably best shown when Doctor Sheiran requested a blood sample from Cloud to compare it to the blood of the cloaked men, but Cloud adamantly refuses despite the potential of giving Sheiran a large clue to figuring what is wrong with the hooded figures.

Barret Wallace

Voiced By: John Eric Bentley (English); Masahiro Kobayashi [Remake], Masato Funaki [Rebirth] (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs} Frédéric Souterelle (French), Tobias Brecklinghaus (German)

"You gonna stand there and pretend you can't hear the Planet cryin' out in pain?! I know you can!"

The loud, boisterous leader of an extremist cell of Avalanche, an anti-Shinra organization. He believes that the only way to stop Shinra from destroying the Planet is by shutting down their mako reactors— by force, if necessary. He lost his right hand sometime prior to the beginning of the game and had it replaced with a Gatling gun, which he wields in combat.

---

• Abnormal Ammo: His "Bonus Round" ability in Rebirth has him enhance his Arm Cannon to fire unique bullets that deal extra damage to the stagger meter. Unlike his regular bullets, these ones do have limited ammo.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: While not outright ugly per-se, Barret in the original game wasn't exactly a looker either, leaning pretty hard on the Face of a Thug scale-o-meter. The remake significantly tones down his harsh facial features to the point where he's more or less become a Hunk, made particularly noticeable when he's without sunglasses and not doing his usual frown◊.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Barret’s second Limit Break, Catastrophe? That was his final Limit Break in the original game.
• Adaptational Intelligence: In the original game, the tutorial for Materia equipping was an in-universe lecture to him and even after it he didn't quite understand. Here, he already has a lightning and cure materia equipped from the start, which are both more useful during the opening mission than Cloud's fire and isn't a part of the tutorial. He's also portrayed as more book-smart than the old Barret. He knows what an Ancient is by name (as he's read it in books on the Lifestream) and even quotes scripture.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • While the original game's Barret did genuinely care for his fellow Avalanche members, he also tended to be harsh with them, calling them "screw-ups" after their successful reactor bombing mission, reacting with anger when Wedge asked about his pay, and sending Biggs flying during an impromptu sparring session back at their hideout. Here, he is far more pleasant and openly affectionate with them. He also intended for them to simply sabotage Reactor 7's Mako pump, rather than blow up the whole reactor like in the original.
  • While Barret and Cloud's relationship also changes from hostile to friendly like in the original game, Rebirth expands on it by having Barret become more of a fatherly figure to Cloud over time, especially if he's taken as Cloud's "date" at the Gold Saucer.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different:
  • Chapter 13 of Remake has Barret as the lead character after getting separated from Cloud and Tifa. Even when he meets up with Tifa, he's still the primarily controlled character. He even gets a unique traversal mechanic where he can shoot objects.
  • Chapter 3 of Rebirth has him being the lead in the second half of the Mithril Mines, with Red XIII tagging along. Just like in Remake, he can use his gun to shoot down objects in the environment.
• Anti-Hero: Barret's enmity towards Shinra puts him in this territory. While the other members of Avalanche react with horror at the destruction (they believe) their bombing Reactor 1 caused, Barret seems grimly resolved to the collateral damage. At different points in the game, both Cloud and Tifa have to stop him from picking fights with ordinary civilians simply for vocally supporting Shinra or repeating anti-Avalanche propaganda. And while it's a bit of an Informed Flaw, Avalanche HQ has disavowed Barret's cell for being too extreme.
• Arch-Enemy: Barret has major beef with Shinra, to the extent that about the only thing he places higher than taking down Shinra is his family. One sequence inside Shinra HQ implies that it's personal for him, when he mentions in a regretful tone that once, he actually bought Shinra's propaganda. He's so resentful of Shinra, that instead of snarking at you if you're going the wrong direction like normal - if he realizes you're going to loot Shinra treasure (like stealing Airbuster's equipment or going for the materia in Reactor 5) he'll be happy to go along. Out of all executives, he does have a particular enmity with Scarlet due to her being the one involved in his Doomed Hometown.
• Arm Cannon: His weapon of choice is a gun grafted onto his right arm. It's actually deconstructed a bit in that his gun-arm is a very distinguishing physical feature which his enemies use to track him in Chapter 3 and a sidequest in Chapter 14.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: Barret's playstyle encourages constant offense. Appropriately he can use multiple ATB bars to boost a single attack, forgoing buffs or healing to deal more damage.
• Back from the Dead: Towards the end of Remake, Barret is impaled through the heart by Sephiroth. Immediately afterwards, one of the Arbiters of Fate resurrects him due to — as Red XIII put it — it not being Barret's destiny to die there.
• Baritone of Strength: The physically imposing Barret also has the roughest voice in the party.
• Berserk Button: Any expression of support of Shinra in front of him will set him off very quickly, to the point where Cloud and Tifa have to prevent him from picking fights with ordinary civilians and jeopardizing Avalanche over it.
• The Big Guy: Standing at 6'6" and over 300 lbs with muscles twice the size of the other physically fit party members, Barret is, far and away, the largest member of the team, serving as the team's resident tank. Impressively, he overpowers Rude in a Punch Parry despite him blocking Cloud's strikes with his bare hands.
• Big Guy Fatality Syndrome: Subverted. He's fatally impaled by Sephiroth, and he dies instantly, but only via demonstration to prove to the heroes that the Whispers of Fate will not let anyone die who wasn't fated to in the original timeline.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Barret's views are pretty simple: Shinra is bad and everything they do, are connected to, are associated with, or even are distantly connected to is also bad. This also means he often employs Insane Troll Logic to justify why he thinks it's Shinra's fault. Someone works for Shinra to provide for their family? Clearly wrong and a brainless idiot. People think mako energy is useful? They should be more willing to give up their way of life despite mako energy having made it more convenient. Cloud even lampshades this by nearly name-dropping the trope. As a side effect, he doesn't really consider the after-effects of his actions since, by his own logic, his actions are all good, though the Shinra platefall does make him falter for a moment.
• Black Dude Dies First: Inverted. Winds up being the only surviving member of his AVALANCHE unit until it becomes clear that both Biggs and Wedge survived, and Jessie is implied to have survived as well. Later subverted, Sephiroth impales him near the end of the game, but he is immediately resurrected since he wasn't fated to die.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He's big, loud, and always excited to blow some Shinra shit up.
• Bottomless Magazines: Barret's gun-arms never run out of ammunition. They just need breaks in-between combos due to overheating.
• Broken Pedestal: Being a passionate studier of planetology himself, Barret is initially excited to meet the elders of Cosmo Canyon due to their reputed expertise in the field, hoping to gain and share valuable knowledge with them, only to end up disillusioned when they reveal themselves to be Know Nothing Know It Alls who arrogantly dismiss anything that doesn't correlate with their outdated theories and worldviews.
  Barret: These planetologists would rather study the world than live in it.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: He's a foul-mouthed, Hot-Blooded man, but beneath it, he's a Doting Parent to Marlene and A Father to His Men.
• Bullying a Dragon: Barret is a giant, intimidating mountain of muscle with a Gatling gun for an arm, yet he gets verbally chewed out twice on the trains by the same Shinra middle-management employee.
• Character Tics: Whenever he gets emotional, he often puts on his sunglasses to try and hide it - noticeably when leaving Marlene in Elmyra's care and when the party is standing by the lake in the Forgotten City after the Beagle timeline Aerith's probable death.
• Close-Range Combatant: If equipped with a melee-type arm, he won't even be able to jump at flying opponents and his basic combos will be replaced with brutal close-ranged punching attacks. Interestingly though, he can still use his ranged abilities with his melee arms to gun down enemies.
• Combat Medic: He opens up with the basic Cure spell in his loadout, and he's a hulking bruiser with a Gatling gun for an arm. This role continues to suit him throughout Remake and Rebirth, thanks to his high HP and ATB buildup allowing him to pile on healing and buffs for the party.
• Combination Attack: As a cutscene attack in the final battle he will combine his Fire in the Hole Limit Break with Red XIII's Stardust Ray.
• Commonality Connection: While he and Yuffie get off on the wrong foot, they eventually bond over their similar personalities and struggles, as they both have a huge grudge against Shinra (and Scarlet in particular) due to their homes being devastated by the company, which gave both revolutionary tendencies and willingness to do morally questionable actions in order to bring their enemies down. At the end of the Corel arc in Rebirth, they even make a promise to bring down Scarlet together one day.
• Cooldown Manipulation: He can reduce the cooldown of his Overcharge by rapidly tapping triangle.
• Cool Shades: He often wears a pair of sunglasses in battle. His menu portraits even update themselves automatically depending on whether he's wearing them in the current chapter. He stops using them as much in Rebirth.
• Cutscene Incompetence: In Hojo's lab, despite Barret holding him at gunpoint, the doctor still has the time to taunt them, free Specimen 0512 to fight them, and then flee. All without Barret ever firing a single shot. To be fair, shooting Hojo before he leads them to Aerith would have caused several complications in the rescue plan (like instant security calls).
• Damage Reduction: His Steelskin ability reduces incoming damage.
• Dash Attack: If he is equipped with a melee-type arm, Overcharge becomes Overrun which has Barret barrel over the enemy with a running punch then crushing them with a heavy pound.
• Death by Adaptation: Defied. Sephiroth stabs him right through the gut in President Shinra's office, but the Arbiters of Fate revive him since it is not his fate to die there.
• Death from Above: His second Limit Break Catastrophe has him jump up in the air and bring down a giant laser from his Arm Cannon.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: His minigun arms do pitiful damage per shot, rarely ever breaking the single digits. But they're miniguns, and there's dozens of shots per attack.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Barrett will sometimes yell out the original game's victory theme after finishing a battle. In Rebirth, he'll hum the game-over theme if Cloud beats him during the Queen's Blood tournament.
• Don't Make Me Destroy You: Barret makes it clear that he doesn't trust Cloud and warns him that he'll put a barrage of bullets in him at the slightest hint of betrayal.
• Doting Parent: He absolutely adores Marlene and easily gives in to her wishes. He also has no problems gushing about her whenever she's brought up in conversation.
• Energy Ball:
  • His "Focused Shot" ability has him gathering energy into a sphere and firing at enemies to deal stagger damage.
  • His "Fire In The Hole" Limit Break has him gathering even more energy, this time firing a sphere that deals regular damage.
• Enhanced Punch: Charging Uppercut has Barret uppercutting enemies with his overheated fist with explosive force.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • As much as he hates President Shinra's guts, he actually expresses outrage when Sephiroth impales him. Though he had wanted revenge on him, Barret still wanted Shinra to answer for his crimes rather than just be killed.
  • Likewise, as much as he considers Shinra's armed forces corporate lapdogs he's at war with, he's completely horrified when a possessed Cloud starts executing surrendering SOLDIERs without mercy.
• Fastball Special: Barret's Synergy abilities with both Yuffie and Red XIII in Rebirth involve them jumping onto his normal hand at some point, making good use of his throwing strength to give them a momentum boost before launching at their enemies.
• Fatal Flaw: His unrelenting hatred of Shinra, and his need to hurt them as much as possible. He is so blinded by his hate it causes him to make some major mistakes in his unending pursuit to expose them, making him extremely easy for them to manipulate and turn his attempts to discredit Shinra into propaganda pieces which do nothing but further bolster their power and damage Avalanche's public image.
• A Father to His Men: With the exception of Cloud for justified reasons (and even then he eventually warms up to him), Barret cares for all members of his Avalanche cell, doing his best to make sure they are safe and taken care of when they need it. Any time they do the job better than he expected, he acts almost like a big brother to them.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: The aptly named Fire in the Hole Limit Break has Barret creating a great ball of flame to blast his enemies with.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Barret starts off mistrustful of Cloud due to him being an ex-SOLDIER, but by the end of the Sector 5 reactor mission admits he was wrong about him.
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: After Myrna died, he has since completely cut himself off from romance. When a vagrant in Corel harasses him over moving on to Tifa, she instantly knows how cutting it is to him and doesn't engage him as Barret apologizes to her.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: With Aerith in Remake. He only gets one battle together with her (the Arsenal) and never really has a direct conversation with her. This has changed as of the epilogue scenes in the INTERmission DLC, which shows the group where the main game left off traveling down the road and having a lighthearted chat about where they're going next. In Rebirth the two interact more often, even sharing a dungeon with Cait Sith in the Shinra Manor.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Unlike his usual Boisterous Bruiser lines in battle, during his playable section in Rebirth where he has to fight Dyne, Barret's combat lines are much more somber and tragic, pleading with his former friend to try and see reason.
• Gatling Good: A Gatling gun serves as his starting weapon, and is the one that shows up in cutscenes and promotional material.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: In Rebirth, after Cloud is manipulated by Sephiroth into attacking Tifa and she falls into the Lifestream and gets eaten by Weapon. Cloud is horrified by what he did and shuts down, prompting Barret to try to get through to him. Once words don't work, Barret smacks him in the face, yelling at him to "get his shit together" and that Tifa needs him. It works and Cloud snaps out of it.
• Good Old Fisticuffs: With a melee weapon equipped, Barret will instead brawl opponents hand-to-hand in a much more uncouth manner than the highly trained Tifa.
• Good Parents: Despite his questionable profession, he's undoubtedly an attentive and responsible father to Marlene.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: The Anti-Hero type. He has three faint scars over his right eye, which are easy to miss but still make him look tough and intimidating.
• Ground Punch: Barret's Smackdown ability has him slam the ground causing an eruption of electricity to send enemies flying.
• Handicapped Badass: He lacks a functioning right hand, which means he has to exert more effort than the average person when performing certain actions like climbing ladders (you can tell from his climb animation that he struggles to maintain balance). But Barret's raw strength and stubborn drive are usually more than enough to compensate for whatever deficiency he might have.
• Healer Signs On Early: Barret is the first party member that joins Cloud and comes with a cure materia for helpful healing. It's probably so that the player has a source of healing not dependent on the limited potions available for the first boss.
• Heartbroken Badass: He is absolutely devastated when Shinra destroys Sector 7, and the deaths of Jessie, Biggs and Wedge (and his belief that Marlene was also killed in the collapse of the plate, though Cloud quickly informs him that she survived thanks to Aerith) only pour even more salt in the wound.
• Hot-Blooded: Barret is very openly passionate in his objective to topple Shinra, giving Cloud a hammy speech about their cause and even admits his heart is "pounding like a jackhammer" with excitement when they're about to bomb their first Mako Reactor.
• Iconic Starter Equipment: Barret's Gattling Gun arm that he starts with is his most iconic weapon due to its connection to his past and the one that's always featured in promotional posters and pre-rendered cutscenes. Rebirth has him starting with it again, with all the previous weapons that could be acquired for him in Remake being inexplicably gone.
• I'll Kill You!: Yells this verbatim to Sephiroth upon seeing him standing nearby as Cloud cradles Aerith. Barret puts two and two together and becomes enraged.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: It's not so instantaneous, but after Cloud tells him that his mother was the Open-Minded Parent and let him leave Nibelheim when he was thirteen without protest, Barret says that he won't stop Marlene from leaving the nest when the time comes. Minutes later, after considering the scenario, he cries to the point where Cloud tells him to pull himself together, pointing out that Marlene has barely taken off her diapers and there's still a long time before that happens.
• I Resemble That Remark!: Barret is incensed at the accusations of Avalanche being a terrorist group, but his method in combatting Shinra mainly consists of bombing reactors and violence towards Shinra personnel. A confrontation on the train shows him trying to intimidate Shinra employees into denouncing the company, which is him quite literally using terror to get his way.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While his hatred of Shinra is presented as less of a positive trait than in the original, coming off more as Black-and-White Insanity due to him using it to justify Jessie's bomb seemingly doing more damage than intended and treating even low-ranking employees just trying to make a living with his usual charm, it can be hard to blame him whether you played the original and have seen all of their horrible actions both in and outside of Midgar or play this game and witness the case of Adaptational Villainy their actions in just Midgar have been subjected to.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Barret is a very loud, aggressive man to those he doesn't like, and can be downright obnoxious at times. Still, he has a kind heart underneath it all. He's shown to be more pleasant and supportive of the AVALANCHE crew in the remake, has a clear soft spot for Tifa, and is very doting towards his daughter Marlene. Although he starts off with distinct antipathy towards Cloud, this evaporates over time. When Cloud enters the train leaving Sector 8, Barret even impulsively admits that he was worried, despite the bad blood that existed between them before this point. He is quick to comfort the AVALANCHE crew upon seeing the damage they've caused in the Mako Reactor 1 bombing. Even in the aftermath of the Sector 7 plate collapse, having his home destroyed and believing Biggs, Wedge, Jessie and Marlene are dead, he is quick to support Tifa, insisting that what happened wasn't her fault. He also agrees to infiltrate Shinra HQ to save Aerith, a woman he doesn't know, just because she helped his daughter.
• The Juggernaut: The ability Steelskin further improves his already high defense and poise, allowing him to easily shrug off hits that would knock down and interrupt the more fragile members of the team. This becomes more noticeable if he's equipped with a melee weapon as his attacks, while slow, hurt.
• Lag Cancel: The quickest way to recharge his Overcharge is to fire his regular attack until the last bullet sends him reeling back, then quickly press the Charge button and Barret will have some charge on his Overcharge without the animation playing instead of having to press Triangle repeatedly until it's filled up.
• Large and in Charge: Barret is one of the tallest characters in the game, has a very imposing demeanor, and is the boisterous leader of Avalanche.
• Large Ham: Even when he's not in battle, he's usually screaming at the top of his lungs with exaggerated movements. This puts him at a stark contrast to the stoic and collected Cloud.
• The Leader: Deconstructed and ultimately subverted. Barret starts off the game as the one in charge, with Cloud begrudgingly following his orders. He not only possesses raw bravery and physical prowess, but also enough charisma to keep the other Avalanche members devoted to his cause through the power of his words alone. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that Barret isn't the most logical sort when it comes to leading his crew on the battlefield, often prone to letting his emotions and hunger to kill get the better of him, always to the detriment of the operation. It's for this reason that he eventually cedes leadership to Cloud, a man who's far more level-headed and tactically experienced than he is in the art of war.
• Leeroy Jenkins: His favorite battle tactic to the annoyance of everyone else. Cloud and Tifa both berate him for it. It usually works because he's so damn dangerous, but he finally pays for his carelessness when he charges Sephiroth-Marco alone in Shinra's office and gets a Masamune sized hole in his torso for it, setting off the storm of timeline errors at the Shinra building that the planet tries to correct resulting in Sephiroth's eventual victory.
• Lightning Bruiser: Not physically as his movement and evasion is poor, but Barret's abilities allow him to build up ATB at an insane rate during battle, especially when stacking multiple buffs, allowing him to quickly take action after action at a level only Tifa can match.
• Long-Range Fighter: His gun can reach places that melee attacks can't, allowing him to attack from a distance.
• Loud Sleeper Gag: Rebirth shows Barret snoring so loud that Cloud can't sleep and immediately agrees to go with Tifa so they can talk in private.
• The Lost Lenore: Rebirth reveals that Barret was married to a woman named Myrna, who died when Shinra destroyed Corel to cover up the fact that one of their Mako Reactors exploded due to a design defect. He still greatly misses her, as he'll confess to Cloud in their Golden Saucer "date".
• Mage Marksman: The Light Machine Gun and EKG Cannon in Remake let Barret become a more magic-oriented character.
• Magically Inept Fighter: Barret has the lowest natural magic stat, the worst magical weapons and the smallest MP pool. While he can do decent magical damage, making it his focus takes a lot of work that won't pay the same dividends the other characters can get.
• Manly Facial Hair: He's a large, muscular man with a beard that further emphasizes his masculinity.
• Manly Man: He's built like a bear, fights like a tank, and carries the gung-ho attitude of your standard 80s movie era tough guy.
• Meaningful Name: 'Barret' means "mighty bear", fitting his imposing stature and aggressive personality.
• Mighty Glacier: He moves pretty slowly, but he makes up for it in ammo, high HP, and powerful shots, and he is the best tank in the party by far. This is also exemplified when wielding a melee arm where his basic attacks become brutally powerful and sluggish. In Rebirth, he gets some moves and weapon upgrades that allow him to fill up ATB bars faster, but does nothing for his movement.
• Morality Pet: His adopted daughter, Marlene, is the only thing that kept him grounded after the destruction of North Corel, making him focused on fighting Shinra to save the planet rather than just for Revenge.
• More Dakka: Barret's Maximum Fury ability will use his entire ATB and pepper the enemy unceasingly with his gun-arm, and if the enemy dies, he immediately targets another.
• Mythology Gag:
  • His Focused Shot ability is visually similar to his Mind Shot Limit from the original game, but it instead deals damage rather than draining the enemy’s MP. However, this effectively makes it an adaptation of Big Shot as it was depicted in Advent Children.
  • His Fire in the Hole Limit is visually identical to his Big Shot Limit in the original game, a big orange Energy Ball fired from his gun-arm.
  • While making their way through the train railways, Barret poses with his gun-arm pointed at the camera almost 90 degrees from the front of his body. Much like a promotional render that could be found in the original manual.
  • Maximum Fury is a re-imagining of Ungarmax (mistranslated from Angermax), a sustained bombardment of gunfire.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: After retrieving the Black Materia from the Temple of the Ancients, Barret snatches it from Cloud out of frustration towards how he's been acting all crazy and tosses it away without paying attention to where he's throwing it, causing the Black Materia to land right at the feet of Sephiroth, who then picks it up and leaves, essentially rendering everything the party just went through to try and prevent Sephiroth from getting his hands on the accursed object entirely pointless.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: As always, his looks, roughhouse attitude, and overall vibe are heavily based on characters played by 80s action movie star, Mr. T — "B.A." Baracus, in particular.
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: The aptly named Pointblank ability has a very small range but will launch enemies without fail when used.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Near the end of the game, President Shinra accuses him of being one in response to his demand that he admit that Shinra, not Avalanche, was behind the destruction of Sector 7 in exchange for Barret saving his life, declaring it as proof that for all his claims of stopping Shinra and saving the planet, Barret is more interested in preserving Avalanche's reputation and his own image and is only out for himself; Barret doesn't actually deny it.
• Over-the-Shoulder Carry: As he lacks a right arm to carry someone otherwise, this is how he takes people he has to move. In Remake he takes Tifa this way out of Mako Reactor 5 as it explodes over her protests to leave Cloud, later he takes Wedge out of the Sector 7 ruins this way. In Rebirth he carries Cloud when mako poisoning at the Gongaga reactor incapacitates him.
• Papa Wolf: If he gets any inclination of someone hurting Marlene in any way, he can get pretty angry and violent very quickly.
  • When Cloud first meets Marlene, she hides in a corner and Barret pushes Cloud for scaring his daughter.
  • After the destruction of Sector 7, greater emphasis is put on how he's a mess because he's not sure where Marlene even is. He begs Cloud to just tell him she's certainly at Aerith's place, just because he needs a hope to hold on to.
  • Played for Laughs a few times in Rebirth. While chasing Salmon and reminiscing over Marlene, Barret can't bring himself to imagine parting with Marlene when the time comes and cries then and there. If Cloud suggests making some of the vegetables Jessie wanted to use in a pizza, Barret gets indignant that Cloud wants to make love potion ingredients, oblivious to the fact Cloud has no idea what he is talking about.
• Parents as People: Barret clearly loves Marlene and generally is a good parent towards her, but his commitment to his missions to destroy Shinra can cause him to unintentionally neglect her. While him entrusting Marlene in Tifa's care for most of Avalanche's day-to-day operations before he returns home every night is an understandable fatherly thing to do, it becomes a different matter when he still keeps Marlene in Seventh Heaven, unprotected and unsupervised, when things are getting seriously dangerous. His neglect had to be addressed by Tifa making the request for Aerith and Wedge to rescue Marlene while she goes to help Barret and Cloud, with Wedge escorting Aerith to Seventh Heaven and Aerith risking her life to save Marlene from the destruction while combining their efforts to guide as much of the other residents as they could to safety. Barret feels immense grief when he thinks Marlene also died in the collapse, having realized his mistake. During one sidequest in Rebirth, he admits that he's worried that his Doting Parent tendencies will result in him not allowing Marlene to eventually make it out on her own when she gets older.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: When he finds President Shinra hanging from the roof and begging to be saved, Barret catches the man as he begins to fall but after Shinra tries to bribe his way out, switches to suspending him over the drop by the collar of his suit, effectively strangling the tyrant. This act of torture only lasts for a few seconds, however, as Barret does come to his senses when Tifa and Aerith call for him to stop, throwing Shinra back onto the roof and following it up with a demand that Shinra clear Avalanche's name.
• Pet the Dog: He warms up to Red XIII very quickly and repeatedly tries to engage with the stoic canine, mostly to no avail.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Despite having the closest relationship with Tifa in the cast as well as all but co-parenting Marlene together, there is absolutely no romantic tension between them.
• Power Fist: Certain arms will exchange Barret's normal long-ranged gunfire with melee attacks.
• Ray Gun: Barret's Focused Shot ability and both of his Limit Breaks will launch lasers rather than bullets from his gun-arm.
• Rebel Leader: He leads an Avalanche cell that's considered to be too extremist even by the organization at large, trying to stop Shinra by actively destroying their reactors, even knowing this will hurt innocent people.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The brash, loud and hot-headed Red to Cloud’s initially aloof and generally stoic and introverted Blue.
• Sanity Slippage: Played for Laughs. If the player opts to use the emergency stairs to infiltrate Shinra HQ (All 59 levels), Barret will get hit with "stairclimber's high" about halfway through, i.e. he nearly loses his damn mind.
  "Think I've got, like, a stairclimber's high! [...] Hahhh... Hahhh... Hahhh... Then what're we waitin' for!? Let's ROLL! [...] Hahhh... We...we gotta keep movin'! Hahahaha! To keep movin'! Hahhh..."
  "Worst. Route. Ever. Gimme a suicidal last stand any day! At least... At least... At least that'd have an end!"
  (After making it through very nearly 50 floors) "THIS SUCKS! I WANNA GO BACK!!!"
  "♫ Another day, another struggle... Climbing stairs is so much trouble. ♫"
• Save the Villain: Barret has a perfect chance to let President Shinra fall to his death, and is obviously tempted to drop the man himself, but instead he chooses to save him. Justified as Barret needs President Shinra alive to clear Avalanche's name by confessing to the public on TV about Shinra's crimes. Sephiroth was counting on Barret to do this, which is why he left Shinra dangling off the roof instead of killing him immediately like the original timeline. This results in Barret going Leeroy Jenkins into Sephiroth and getting fatally stabbed for it (even if the Arbiters Of Fate make sure that last part doesn't work).
• Saving the World: Barret's other motivation for fighting. He really does see himself and Avalanche as the protectors of the world and it's why at the end of the game, he joins with the rest of the party in hunting planetary threat Sephiroth instead of returning to Marlene.
• Scary Black Man: He's a large and intimidating black man with an abrasive personality and a huge Arm Cannon attached to his arm. People who don't know often tend to be scared of him.
• Scratch Damage: Compared to Cloud, Barret's gun deals less raw damage. Instead, Barret's hits are weak, but there's a ton of them. This makes him useful against bulky enemies since as long as he isn't being attacked, he can whittle it down while his allies take aggro.
• Shameless Self-Promoter: Crossing with Soapbox Sadie. Barret will always take any excuse to expound on his idealogy about the planet to anyone who will listen and even to those who really don't want to listen. It's such a big part of his character that in Rebirth, when someone that witnesses say had a gun for an arm shoots up Shinra soldiers and some innocent civilians in the process, Cloud's first proof that it couldn't be Barret is that whoever did it also shot the security camera, and if Barret had truly been the one to shoot all those people, he'd want the entire world to know why rather than do it in secrecy.
• Shear Menace: The Steel Pincer weapon exchanges his gun-arm for a gruesome pair of scissors.
• Shock and Awe: Starts off with lightning magic.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Barret's foul mouth is back, and now fully voiced. While he doesn't use the ever-versatile f-bomb you'll still hear a consistent stream of profanity from him.
  Barret: [unleashing Overcharge] Asshole!!
• Skewed Priorities: When holding President Shinra hostage, Barret demands that he publically declare Shinra's culpability in both the destruction inflicted on Midgar during the events of the game and the damage to the planet caused mako harvesting and that Avalanche are heroes trying to stop Shinra. President Shinra points out that he could have ordered an immediate shut down of all the mako reactors instead and accuses Barret of caring more about being seen as a hero than actually saving the planet.
• Skill Gate Characters: During regular gameplay in Remake, his long range, great physical stats and ability to double his firepower by using two bars will get you through most enemies. On Hard mode and the later challenges, his low speed and low damage ceiling greatly outpace his durability advantages. On the other hand, his high HP and tanking abilities make him suitable for superbosses like Bahamut and Pride and Joy Prototype. In Rebirth, his usefulness as a Support Party Member and ability to get bars up fast means that he remains useful in his own way by fighting and locking down foes with Synergy Abilities that can come in handy against some of the harder challenges, averting this.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: He wears a brown vest with no sleeves, which better shows off his muscular arms and huge Arm Cannon.
• Soapbox Sadie: He's constantly making speeches to anyone who will listen (and sometimes even to those who won't) about how the planet is alive and how Shinra is killing it with their mako harvesting. During the sector 5 bombing, upon learning that they are being streamed live on the news, he even takes a moment to clear his throat before launching into a big speech to what he assumes is the public of Midgar. Tifa asks him what the hell he's doing, and Cloud notes that even if there is footage of them being streamed, the audio no doubt is cut out.
• Stone Wall: Barret has high defensive stats and can further reduce incoming damage with Steelskin as well as take damage in place of his allies with Lifesaver.
• Sunglasses at Night: He begins Remake' wearing Terminator-esque shades◊ and has a tendency to keep them on during missions, most of which take place at night or in a sections of the city under an iron plate that never sees the sun in the first place. By Rebirth, he has dropped the habit.
• Super Armor: Steelskin can increase Barret's resistance to flinching when attacked.
• Support Party Member: Barret doesn't have quite the damage potential of brawlers like Cloud and Tifa nor the versatility of Yuffie, but he's excellent at building enemies' Stagger meters from a safe distance, allowing his teammates to take advantage of their vulnerable state. Several of his unique skills let him tank hits for others, and his sky-high HP, defense, and ATB gain also potentially make him an excellent White Mage if he's built to compensate for his low MP and Magic stats.
• Taking the Bullet: His Lifesaver ability allows him to take damage for his allies.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: In the opening mission, with Cloud. Cloud holds Barret's mission and obsession with the planet in contempt, while Barret is openly suspicious of Cloud's skills and loyalty — mockingly calling him "Stamp" in reference to an in-universe children's cartoon about a loyal dog soldier serving as pro-Shinra propaganda.
• Tempting Fate: When infiltrating the main Shinra building by going through the rear entrance by being on top of a Shinra vehicle, after the inspection of the guards, he claims that so far everything is well until he falls over and lands on one of the guards, butt-first. The guard looks pretty pissed about having 300 pounds of terrorist sitting on his back.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Barret's melee attacks lack any style or finesse, mostly consisting of large arm swings, wild kicks and shoulder charges, but each of them deals massive damage on hit.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Develops this dynamic with Cloud in the second half of Remake where they still snark and quip at one another, but eventually come to trust each other as true allies in the fight against Shinra and, eventually, Sephiroth. Barret even admits (quite warmly as a matter of fact) that Cloud is a good man.
• Warrior Poet: He's fond of making grand eloquent speeches whenever the mood strikes him, particularly when he wants to prove a point.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Barret is dedicated to protecting the planet from Shinra but his method is blowing up the Mako reactors to prevent Shinra from using up the planet's natural resources. It's telling that once his group sees the larger-than-expected collateral damage that came from blowing up Sector 8's reactor caused, Barret refuses to stop, arguing that the damage his group caused is a necessary evil and that they knew that it wasn't going to be pretty.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Inverted in how he treats the Sephiroth Clones. Barret is one of the few people known to view them as people, as seen when he stops some upset beachgoers from harassing one, and later trying to tell them to wait until they find a passage through the Corel Reactor.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Barret's preferred solution to problems is More Dakka. Most of his offensive special attacks are just a barrage of gunfire, and when he temporarily becomes the party leader in Chapter 13, he destroys obstacles in his way by just shooting at them until they fall apart, be they concrete walls, spinning fans, or locked doors. In the same chapter, Tifa lampshades this.
  Tifa: I'm afraid to ask, but did you just shoot your way in here?
  Barret: Well, yeah. [Beat] Worked, didn't it?
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Barret's got a fear of heights, most notably when traversing the Sector 4 underplate, which has been left in disrepair and leaving a lot of treacherous terrains dangling just over a drop hundreds of feet down. Related to this, he also dislikes ladders, not just because of the heights but the difficulty in climbing them with one arm.
  Barret: I see a console on top of that ladder. Um... a really tall ladder...
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: If Cloud decides to climb 59 flights of stairs at Shinra HQ, Barret can only mutter a weak "You have got to be shittin' me."

Tifa Lockhart

Voiced By: Britt Baron (English), Ayumi Ito (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs} Jessica Barrier (French), Shandra Schadt (German)
Young Tifa Voiced By: Glory Curda (English), Ayaka Mitsumoto (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs} Jessica Barrier (French), Leonie Landa (German)

"Can't say this is quite what I had in mind when I asked for your help, way back when."

Tifa and Cloud grew up together in their hometown of Nibelheim before he left to join the SOLDIER program. Now a member of Barret's Avalanche cell, she runs Seventh Heaven, a bar in the Sector 7 slums of Midgar which also serves as their hideout. Tifa was trained by Zangan, a legendary martial artist, and she blindsides opponents with a barrage of punches and kicks.

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• Action Girl: Tifa is a highly skilled martial artist and is the most hands-on fighter of the group.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: It's subtle, but she was a brunette in the original game, while here it's pitch black.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
  • The remake plays up her insecurities and Reluctant Warrior traits a number of times.
    • Tifa in the original game was largely dedicated to the cause of Avalanche with little issue on her side about being involved, though the lifestream event says she didn't want to be known as a violent person. In Remake, she's unsure of herself and often wonders if the group's actions are justifiable.
    • In the original game, Barret and the others had no reason to question Tifa's resolve, but her reluctance to hurt innocents with Avalanche's bombing plan in the Remake causes Jessie to wonder whether Tifa is truly committed to their cause. During the trip to Mako Reactor 5, she also admits to being nervous, something she never truly expressed in the original game.
    • She's also alot more torn up about the destruction of her bar, alongside the rest of Sector 7. In the original she's sad about the loss of life but shows no real grief about losing her bar. Whereas in the remake losing her bar makes the entire situation all the more painful. Losing the bar reignites feelings of loss when she lost her family and hometown years ago, making her breakdown in Cloud's arms.
  • While there was a divide between Cloud and Tifa in the original, the relationship is more strained in these games. Upon seeing Cloud nearly kill Johnny, she says that Cloud scares her and often has to reign in his more destructive impulses in check. in Rebirth a subplot is that Sephiroth is gaslighting Cloud into thinking she is an imposter despite all the evidence she brings up, culminating in him attacking her into the Lifestream.
• Adaptational Modesty: She wears a sports bra that compresses her large breasts, and black stockings that cover most of her legs. She also wears Modesty Shorts, something, as revealed in Dissidia Final Fantasy, she lacked. On the other hand, her shirt covers less of her midriff than in the original, and her "mature" undercover dress is the most fanservicey outfit she's worn in any appearance. And even that is outdone by her revealling beachwear in Rebirth.
• Almost Kiss: After Tifa recovers from the events at the Gongaga reactor, she approaches Cloud for an intimate conversation and then leans over like she's about to kiss him before realizing that Yuffie and Cait Sith are peeping nearby.
• Animal Motif: Fitting for her Water Is Womanly aesthetic, hers is a dolphin. She is intelligent, playful at times, kind and helps the lost find their way, but will still fight to protect others. Her second Limit Break involves a projection of a dolphin, and she even styles her hair like a dolphin's bottle-nose. In Rebirth. Red calls her like a dolphin when she asks his opinion on her more revealing beachwear. And parodied if she has a more conservative outfit, whose lined designs have him compare her to a breaching whale, a motif that is not without merit as whales are known for their ties to compassion, strength, community, music, spirituality and truth, all characteristics she possesses. Given her eventual close encounter with the Whale Weapon, the comparison proves to be more on the nose than either expected. Notably, both her beachwear outfits change her hairstyle and sport visible panties, a fashion statement known as a whale tail.
• Attention Whore: Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts expounds that she used to be one and did a lot for attention, even thinking that Midgar was her rival for affection. Later events largely snap her out of it, though she still has an attention streak as multiple conversation choices with Cloud get the best response when he's being flirtatious over factitious.
• Badass Driver: Drives the Shinra Hauler out of the city under attack by Shinra forces in Remake. It's a beater so she can't outrun everything, but she makes it work despite the heavy resistance. Later in Rebirth she drives the dune buggy when the Turks and Palmer attack the party, even doing a flip with it to get Elena off the hood.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: As in the original game, Tifa fights with her hands and her feet. Tifa shows herself capable of punching enemies up into the air with her attacks, and she punches a drone on a train so hard that it gets launched out of a window. In gameplay, she has a unique ability to charge up attacks for more effectiveness and different effects.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Tifa is an athletic martial artist with a Girly Girl personality, and her belly-exposing outfit accentuates her femininity.
• The Bartender: Tifa runs the Seventh Heaven bar, a popular spot in the Sector 7 slums that serves as Avalanche's secret headquarters. The combination of her cooking/drink mixing skills, good looks, natural empathy, and being a good conversationalist make her an extremely popular bartender. Barret claims Seventh Heaven was much less popular before she took over. She even serves Cloud a drink while performing some impressive bartender tricks when he drops by. In Rebirth, she makes a drink a couple times out of habit after having been a bartender for so long.
• Bathing Beauty: Showering seems to be one of her favorite stress relievers. Two of her most frequent post-battle dialogues have her longing for a shower after working up a good sweat. Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts frequently mentions her showering to de-stress, including enjoying the luxurious modern showers of Midgar when she first had the chance to try one. This seems to be partly due to her early housing conditions in Midgar being extremely poor and having no pumbling, forcing her to take the badly-maintained community showers of the slums, so she knows very well how showers can be a Mundane Luxury.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Tifa is an inside-out beauty with her not only being overtly attractive outside, but also possessing remarkable selflessness and compassion.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Deconstructed; the book Trace of Two Pasts outlines that Sephiroth slashing her severed bone and flesh so severely during the Nibelheim Incident required some major emergency treatment, including medical wire to close the gaps in her wounds. Once all was said and done, overly-expensive skin transplants were then used, closing up what should've been massive scarring from ever occurring. This actually landed her in severe debt for the costs, not helped by her doctor marking up the debt intentionally to try to keep her under his thumb.
• Betty and Veronica: Played With when compared to Aerith in the love triangle with her and Cloud. She's more of a Ms. Fanservice, look-wise, due to her overtly attractive figure, but she's the Girl Next Door Childhood Friend to Cloud, and while both girls are exceptionally kind, she's more meek, shy and reserved, while Aerith is more extroverted, wild and mischievous.
• Beware the Nice Ones: A very kind-hearted and patient girl through and through, who nevertheless shouldn't be messed with considering she's a master martial artist with Charles Atlas Superpower. Rakesh learned this the hard way on Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts after exploiting her as a slave laborer, as well as Al who tried to sexually harass her (which got Lost in Translation for NA version).
• Big Damn Kiss: If Cloud takes Tifa on the second Gold Saucer date and their Relationship Values are high enough, the date will end with them sharing a kiss.
• Big Sister Instinct: She's very protective of Marlene and is usually the one who looks after her when Barret is out.
• Birds of a Feather: While Tifa and Cloud do differ in temperment with Tifa being openly compassionate compared to Cloud who hides much of his compassion under a projection of a stoic mercenary, the two do have a lot in common. In addition to growing up in the same town and surviving the Nibelheim incident, both are physically strong fighters, and plagued by mental issues and doubts. Both are also shy introverts who struggle to express themselves and communicate with others, which causes considerable tension in their relationship during the events of Rebirth.
• Brainy Brunette: Her room has a lot of books that she apparently reads in her spare time. One of the responses Cloud gives for her description is that she hits the books often. Tifa's intelligence is otherwise shown in her street smarts around the slums and her knowledge in maintaining and upkeeping Seventh Heaven.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: The Nibelheim flashback shows that Tifa was a bit of one before, not afraid to stand up to her dad when going on a hiking trip up the mountain and willing to sass the Soldier taking point. The destruction of the village and five years living in the slums of Midgar have not done good things to her confidence since then.
• Breeding Slave: In a similar vein to Aerith, Hojo's considers Tifa a good candidate to breed for his experiments. In Rebirth, when Hojo's Grasptropod captures Tifa, Hojo rhetorically asks Tifa if she would interested in "bringing a new hero to life" with the dark implication being he plans to have the mutant Sephiroth Clone impregnate her. Thankfully, Tifa is saved by Cloud, Yuffie, and Johnny before anything could happen.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The gentle and compassionate Tifa shares this dynamic with the brooding, stoic, and troubled Cloud.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Her sizable bust is one of the reasons she's a Dude Magnet. This is all the more apparent in Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts, as Tifa takes notice of how some men in Midgar (including her first boss) can't help but stare straight at Tifa's chest when talking to her. Said boss even attempted to give her a "street name" based on her boobs, but she firmly declined the idea. In Rebirth even Cloud has difficulty not staring at her chest when he sees her in a bikini, leading Tifa to have to lower her head to meet his gaze and playfully tease him about it.
• Cannot Spit It Out: In Rebirth, Tifa simply can't bring herself to tell Cloud that his memories of Nibelheim are wrong, partially out of confusion — from Tifa's perspective, Cloud was never even there, much less the one who journeyed to the reactor with her and Sephiroth. It reaches a new level when they return to Nibelheim and Cloud begins to remember Zack, but his unwell mind rationalizes Zack's disappearance as him being swept away by the river they fell into. Tifa still doesn't correct Cloud on this point, choosing to comfort him instead, presumably thinking that Cloud would just completely shut down if she challenged his memories.
• The Caretaker: During the early parts of Remake she was one for Marco, one of the mako poisoned Robed men, keeping an eye on him to make sure he wasn't bothered and smoothening an incident between him and Cloud. Keeping him safe turned out to be for the worse in the long run as Sephiroth manipulates him to attack President Shinra and Barret. Her experiences with the mentally ill becomes useful when Cloud himself suffers his bouts of mental degradation.
• Character Tics: When Tifa is unsure of herself or the current plan, she has a tendency to hold one or both of her elbows.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Tifa's a normal human whose strength comes from training alone. This affords her enough strength to kick away pipes that fell from several stories high, smack around dangerous monsters, and boot Eligor through several shipping containers. Her strength can even give Sephiroth pause. Impressively in Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts she says that after Nibelheim she was a hospital invalid when she came to, requiring days of bed rest before she can even shower. Tifa built up her strength over three years to be as strong as she is now from that.
• Childhood Friend Romance: If Cloud's Relationship Values with Tifa is high enough in Rebirth, they get a Relationship Upgrade on the second Gold Saucer date where they share a Big Damn Kiss, many years after they parted ways as kids.
• Childhood Friends: With Cloud. They grew up in the same small town and used to play together before Thea's death, of which afterwards they didn't hang out as much, shown in Cloud ignoring Tifa who calls out to him and keeps walking in a flashback. One of their biggest interactions was right before Cloud left to join SOLDIER when he asked her to meet him on the water tower that night.
• Cleavage Window: Her Sporty outfit has a prominent hole to accentuate her cleavage. Notably, it doesn't show that much skin otherwise.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Downplayed, but she shows a bit of jealousy of Cloud's relationship with Aerith, especially the scene in the Train Graveyard where she gets upset when Aerith clings to Cloud's arm and quickly latches onto his other arm, then later when the three fall and Cloud asks Aerith specifically if she's all right. Downplayed but reoccurs in Rebirth when Aerith comments she and Cloud had a date at the clock tower.
• Close-Range Combatant: Even more so than Cloud, as Tifa has a lower attack range and no long-range moves, so she needs to get point blank with her enemies to deal damage. Thankfully for her, Tifa can bridge the gap with her higher speed and distance crossing maneuvers.
• Color Motif: She wears mostly black and white, just like her original design and her Advent Children outfit. The Remake adds blacker elements to her original design, as she now has a black sports bra under her white shirt and black stockings on her legs. There is elements of red as well, and have a tendency to be emphasized when she is particularly angry.
• Combo: One of the best parts of her gameplay is to string attacks into each other. All three of her triangle moves flow into each other and can go into a Diving Kick and whatever else to finish the string.
• Cooldown Hug: In Rebirth, Tifa hugs Cloud from behind to stop him from murdering anymore and stop whatever is happening to his mind. It works, but everybody becomes worried over Cloud's mentality afterwards.
• Creature of Habit: In "Traces Of Two Pasts" Red XIII notes while hearing her story that she prefers stability and routine to adventure and drama. Unfortunately for her, drama has a habit of upending her life a lot.
• Criss-Cross Attack: Tifa's Shooting Star will finish with her blazing past her enemy in this way with a generous hitbox for dealing AoE damage.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • Tifa's Purple Pain weapon in Remake turns her into this, boosting the damage of her critical hits and critical chance.
  • In Rebirth several of her skill cores emphasize critical hit chances and damage. The Járngreipr doubles down and gives her the ability to increase her damage and percent chance on top of those.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Her great physical stats when equipped with her best physical weapons can make her a high damage machine to those enemies with average physical defense. Against sturdier enemies, you'll be better off using the mages to deal real damage. The ATK/MAG swap materia reverses this and makes her a great mage at the expense of her physical prowess.
• Cry into Chest: Her Resolution scene in chapter 14 has her having a break down over the Sector 7 plate collapse and she starts crying into Cloud's chest, mourning over having lost her home yet again.
• The Cutie: Despite her Ms. Fanservice appearance, she's definitely an adorable sweetheart without a mean bone in her body.
• Cutscene Incompetence:
  • If Cloud makes it to the end of the train before the timer runs out, Tifa is shown nervous and hesitating to jump, prompting Cloud to haul her off himself. Otherwise, she'll make the leap on her own.
  • After the battle with the Turks on top of Sector 7's plate, she gets injured by the whispers and calls out to Cloud for help while he's in the middle of pursuing Rude, thus distracting Cloud and giving Rude just enough time to escape with the critically injured Reno. What makes this scene odd is that Tifa's already walking about with no signs of injury the moment the Turks have left the area.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: One of the things she brings to the group, though it only applies when an enemy is staggered. She has her Unique Attacks and the True Strike ability to increase the damage percentage bonus of a staggered enemy. This is almost unique to her with only Aerith's Ray of Judgment and Cait Sith's Moogle Punch, both of whom need more time and bars to pull off, abilities being the other increasers.
• Dark and Troubled Past: While it's only hinted at in the first game, Rebirth shows that she did not end up alone in Midgar in good circumstances as we see a flashback of her cradling her dead father.
• Dash Attack: Tifa's Focused Strike has her made an evasive movement and rush forward with a powerful punch.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Childhood Friends love interest. While Cloud and Tifa developed feelings of attraction to each other during their childhood, as shown in their respective companion literature 2,000 Gil to Becoming a Hero and Traces of Two Pasts, their respective personality flaws, naivete, and poor perceptions ended up harming their potential bond rather than develop it, causing their current relationship to be fraught with tension over their perceived ideals clashing with their real personalities. Cloud's childhood confidence issues led him to avoid Tifa and her friends, even when they tried to draw his attention, while for her part Tifa thought his guise of being a loner was an admirable trait when in fact it just made him lonelier and worse off. In the games, both of their old views of each other are continually tested, and often their relationship is not the better for it. It takes actual communication between the two and testing their views on each other, both past and present, that allow them to forge a genuine and long term bond, however hurting or challenging it can be sometimes.
• Determinator: Deconstructed. When Tifa puts her mind to something, she doesn't give up on it, as pointed out in the novel Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts where she says that after Nibelheim she was practically an invalid after a month-long coma and lifesaving surgery that put her highly in debt. She put all expenses on hold to work it off while training her body. With her regular salary she would have done it in 7 years, but she found a way to do it in 5. However, she also tends to falter when it comes to high risk ordeals, and often needs to draw strength from those with the drive to push through their goals (such as Cloud and Barret) to get her own ball rolling. Though once she does decide to see things through, she won't give up even if she'll be the first to admit that something could be impossible. Best shown in the Temple of the Ancients, where she encourages Barret to keep running and believing that they'll make it out as the whole place collapses.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • When you don't know how to use her, she's a Fragile Speedster who's weaker than Cloud. If you do, however, she becomes an incredible Glass Cannon that can stagger enemies left and right, and outdamage everyone.
  • Precise timing on her uppercuts by guarding at the right times or using Lv 2 Unfettered Fury punches can allow the player to deal massive amounts of damage while generating bars at high speed.
  • Rebirth gave Focused Strike a one-hit invincibility armor that allows her to strike past a blow for no damage to herself. Use it right and would be unavoidable attacks become easily stopped.
• Diving Kick: The aptly named Diving Kick has her jump and come down on enemies foot-first in this manner. If she is doing an animation that has her in the air already, she will perform it immediately, helping her attack time and DPS.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: As told in Traces of Two Pasts, Tifa developed a childhood infatuation towards Cloud upon getting the impression that he's a "cool, lone wolf" type who enjoyed living in isolation and independency, and from there, started idealizing his situation when the rest of the kids left and she had more time to herself. However, the book also leaves evidence suggesting that Cloud's solitary life wasn't out of preference, but due to experiencing ostracization from the rest of Nibelheim, much like how they treated his mother, Claudia. As adults, Tifa still carries this impression of Cloud throughout Remake and a good portion of Rebirth, until Cloud himself makes it very clear that Tifa had him figured all wrong because he never wanted to be alone to begin with, prompting her to concede that they really don't know each other all that well.
• Dude Magnet: A lot of ambient dialogue in the slums are from guys talking about how attractive she is and their plans to get her to notice them. Johnny believes Tifa's in love with him, while Rude will avoid attacking her and stops Reno from shooting at her by saying it was a hand slip. Even when she was younger, she was usually surrounded by boys.
• Elemental Punch: Is able to dish out elemental strikes with her fists if Elemental Materia is equipped on her weapons. Rebirth adds to her repertoire with Reverse Gale, a wind infused beatdown.
• Enhanced Punch: Tifa's True Strike has her focus the energy into her fist to deliver a powerful blow. In Rebirth, her synergy ability with Aerith covers her fists in magical energy as she attacks and Avalalanche Two Step with Barret finishes the attack with an enhanced double punch.
• Extreme Doormat: Tifa has a tendency to worry about what others think of her and always tries to act in a way that no one will dislike her. Although this makes her caring, on the other hand it prevents her from imposing herself and revealing her true feelings. She admits to Cloud that she needed everyone to like her all the time when she was a kid, and even now as an adult part of her still does, which is something Tifa kind of hates about herself.
• Famed In-Story: The Seventh Heaven has a great reputation in the undercity, to the point Kalm's own bartender has heard of her and tries to emulate her drinks, which she is willing to help with. And the stories at Jules' gym of how she bested them in a pull up game gave them a new member that emulates her style.
• Family Theme Naming: Tifa's mother is named Thea Lockhart, which means the two of them have four-letter names with the first T and the last A.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Has one arm covered in more protective gear than the other, and her hair is parted to have a bang hanging over her forehead while the other side is exposing her ear and earring.
• Fastball Special: One of Tifa's Synergy abilities in Rebirth, Soaring Flurry, has her be thrown by Cloud's sword or by Barret into the enemy. She also has a variant with Aerith, Yuffie, and Cait Sith, Heavenly Ascent, where they use magic to lift her into the air.
• Flash Step: A staple in many of Tifa's abilities. Her Synergy attack with Aerith in Rebirth sees Tifa bouncing around a magical dome with superhuman speed.
• Foil:
  • To Cloud. As the only known survivors of the Nibelheim Incident, the two have made very different choices in moving forward and life in general. Both have attention and validation problems, but while Tifa tries to keep a lid on them, Cloud has a tendency to overextend his hand when dealt some. As confident as she looks, Tifa is actually plagued by self-doubt and can often be a co-dependent people pleaser, while Cloud tends to put an air of confidence even when it comes at the detriment of his relationships and has a hard time expressing his loneliness as a result. Hard a hand as she has been dealt, Tifa has never let it change her good natured ways while Cloud has become much more violent and often needs his militant views checked.
  • To Barret. While both are loyal members of Avalanche, Barret is so consumed by his hatred for Shinra that he dismisses any collateral damage that his group might cause, while Tifa frequently expresses discomfort over the group's methods and results and also shows sympathy for some Shinra employees.
  • To Aerith. Both are very selfless and kind-hearted women, but while Tifa is somewhat more shy and quiet, Aerith is more of a playful Genki Girl. Both have issues revealing their true feelings, but cover them up in different ways. Tifa pushes them aside and finds work arounds while Aerith covers them up with positivity and keeps up the facade. Best represented by their attempts to high five Cloud: Tifa doesn't broach the subject and celebrates without trying to engage Cloud again while Aerith doesn't hide her discomfort and keeps up the subject until Cloud reciprocates. Later in Rebirth, Tifa's goal is to keep Cloud grounded while trying to find the truth of their memories, while Aerith opts to take Cloud to other worlds in order to build a better future and to help him directly against Sephiroth's more otherworldly attempts to overpower or influence him, even if it means also loosening his grip on reality in the meantime. Lastly, both of them carry scars from a Dark and Troubled Past that they are trying to move forward from, but while Aerith is able to focus on the future and let the past rest, even if she has to be a Stepford Smiler to do so, Tifa remains shackled and weakened by hers, as explored throughout Rebirth and Traces of Two Pasts, the latter of which even lampshades the dichotomy through the book's cover: Aerith is shown standing under white text and facing upwards with an expression that conveys clarity and hope, whereas Tifa is standing under black text with a downcast look that indicates a troubled mind wrestling with doubts and insecurity. This is also shown in how both have the same roots in their name, the Tiferet, but neither shares a syllable. Tifa has the first half to show how she represents Cloud's past.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Not the main Beagle timeline's Tifa, but the Tifa of Zack's timeline is swiftly forgotten by him despite the rapport they built in the Nibelheim incident. Making it more noticeable, Tifa had tried making friends with him as shown in Crisis Core: Reunion.
• Fragile Speedster: Tifa is the zippiest attacker of the protagonists in Remake (besides being the naturally fastest, some of her weapons will uniquely increase Speed to the point where her animations move at double the speed or possibly more than the others and she can further increase this by using Unbridled Fury) but lags behind in health and defense compared to Barret and Cloud (although she does have better health and defense than Aerith). To help offset this, her default load includes the Chakra Materia to self-heal at will with no MP charge. Rebirth changes her spot on the team somewhat by making Red the fastest by default, matching her speed with Yuffie's who has moves with faster animations and crowd control, not giving her weapons additional speed but giving her better attack speed so that she can dodge or perfect block better and a better dodge that improves with chi level so that she can avoid damage altogether better than the other fighters.
• Gamer Chick: Downplayed, but she is very familiar with the Fort Condor game in Midgar. Apparently she plays Wedge regularly, the second best player in Sector 7. She is also very capable in just about any minigame she takes an interest in, with only Regina and Cloud besting her at the Shinra-8 tournament.
• The Gift: In Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts her mentor Zangan singles her talent for martial arts out as exceptional upon first meeting her. He is quick to make sure that Tifa doesn't get overconfident by saying her greatest opponent is herself.
• Girl Next Door: While she might not look like one, Tifa fits the trope by being typically friendly, laid-back, and supportive, Cloud's Childhood Friend, and also the person Cloud is most familiar with at the start of the game. She also counts as a literal example, since she personally sets Cloud up in the apartment next door to hers when he settles into the Sector 7 Slums.
• Girly Bruiser: She's a Bare-Fisted Monk who's one of the physically strongest characters in the party, and capable of beating up enemies like giant robots and mutated monsters, yet has a very feminine, gentle and demure personality.
• Glass Cannon: Along with having bar-none the fastest attack speed and the highest Speed stat of the playable characters in Remake, her options give her overwhelming physical attack prowess, having the ability to deliver high DPS while weaving in ATB skills constantly due to her high charge speed. Once an enemy is downed, her ability to increase Stagger Damage the fastest among the playable cast allows her to rack up heavy burst damage against foes in very little time. With proper gear and execution, Tifa can be considered one of the most effective physical attack characters, gameplay-wise. Her lack of strong defensive options means that she'll be taking as much damage as she deals out. Of the close range fighters, she doesn't naturally have an ability to help her tank a hit, even though she does have super armor on a few moves to help push through the damage. Coupled with the fact that she racks up damage through consecutive hits rather than raw strength, she's both this as well as a Fragile Speedster. Rebirth increases her damage dealing capabilities and gives her both the highest natural strength stat and the hardest hitting weapon of the group, though her defense remains weak.
• Good with Numbers: Tifa is shown to be good with numbers and finances, and was even the one in charge of handling Avalanche's budget. Cloud can even describe her as being "good with the books" to Chocobo Sam. Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts shows this even more prominently, as Tifa personalizes the workout routine of the people in her Calisthenics group in Nibelheim, gets good at counting money to pay off her medical bills during her time at the slums and even figures out how to get more work done for her food stand so that she can raise the money years before she first figured.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: In Rebirth her unique travel skill is to use a grappling hook to get to distant ledges.
• Green-Eyed Monster: The Rebirth Ultimania confirms that Tifa is secretly envious of more assertive women like Aerith and Yuffie, who are able to stand up for their beliefs and see through to them regardless of what others may think, whereas she tends to fall in line with the crowd even if things go against her personal conscience and/or better judgment. She recognizes this personality flaw and admits that she wants to try to be better.
• Guilt Complex: Throughout Remake, especially after Sector 7 is destroyed, Tifa repeatedly tries to shoulder the blame for bad things that happen even when it couldn't possibly be her fault. Even when she's reassured it's not, it's easy to tell she doesn't completely believe it.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Being the most overtly attractive female of the game's cast, Tifa attracts attention wherever she goes. Several characters in-game comment on her beauty. It's even something of a plot point, since a love-struck Rude refuses to attack her the minute he first sees her. In the PS5 expansion, one of Corneo's goons is seen excitedly running in upon discovering her, stating he's found 'the hottie of the century'.
• Heroic BSoD: When the Sector 7 plate is about to fall, she's so horrified she's stuck in staring helplessly down at her doomed home in a Twisted-Knee Collapse and doesn't attempt to escape her own doom. Cloud has to physically grab her for her to come back to her senses.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Tifa often wonders if what she does is enough, or if she can accomplish something that seems impossible. This is a notable difference between her and Cloud, whose Inferiority Superiority Complex, Determinator, Heroic Willpower, and general raw talents spur him to barrel into problems without thinking about what can or cannot be done, and often ends up accomplishing more because of it. In Rebirth, she says this to Cloud, whose response is to never give up on what she can do.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: She and Aerith become very close friends throughout Remake, Trace of Two Pasts, and Rebirth, enjoying each other’s company greatly. Out of everyone in the party, she is the most devastated upon witnessing Aerith’s supposed death.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: One way to play to avoid the problem with her low health. She can attack faster and disengage better than Cloud allowing her to get hits in and avoid counterattacks. Her Focused Strike emphasizes this by dodging first then striking.
• Hurricane Kick: If she has a chi level 3 while using Deadly Dodge her combo will have her perform a relatively realistic version that actually resembles Sakura's variant than Ryu's. Slowing down the animation of Dolphin Flurry shows that the Spin Attack she performs in the middle is actually one of these, done horizontally instead of vertically.
• An Ice Person: Tifa starts Rebirth with the ice materia and can buff it almost immediately with icy impulse. This is in line with her appearances in Dissidia. During a cutscene fight with Jenova Lifeclinger, she freezes one of its liquid projectiles solid and slides on it to deliver several fierce punches on the creature's chest.
• Iconic Starter Equipment: While not quite as iconic as Cloud's famous Buster Sword or Barret's Gatling Gun, Tifa's Leather Gloves are synonymous with her. They are always in her prerendered cutscenes and some intimate moments change her model to using them for the cutscene. They have been redesigned to be both more functional in daily work and to look armored enough to use as weapons for fighting giant monsters and mechs.
• I'm Crying, but I Don't Know Why: Possibly the reason for Tifa's more extreme reaction to the end of Rebirth, and why she has a reason to cry in the first place. Her unexplained flashes of seemingly Aerith's blood means that she senses that a version of her died at the altar, and while everyone believes her to be alive but needing to stay safe, Tifa still feels the pain of losing her but doesn't know the full cause.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: Tifa has had this body type since the original game, and she has it again here. While still clearly muscular, her waist is much smaller than her chest, hips, and butt.^note The Final Fantasy VII Remake Material Ultimania officially lists her measurements as B92-W60-H88, with a cup size of 32DDD. It even gets Lampshaded by one of Corneo's goons during INTERmission.
  Corneo goon: Goods under the hood, junk in the trunk, and down for a bumpy ride!
• Incompletely Trained: Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts shows that her training in Zangan-style martial arts was never completed due to the Nibelheim Incident occurring before Zangan could teach her some of his final secrets. During her early years in Midgar where she trains her body back in shape, she notes that she started to naturally developed her own spin-off of Zangan's style due to this, with her moves and techniques becoming more hers than his. When Red XIII inquires her about it, she says she looks forward to meeting her master again something, to test her own new techniques on him.
  Red XIII: Your long-overdue exam. Still eager to learn the deepest secrets of his art?
  Tifa: Not really. The next time we spar, I'll be using my own style. I intend to teach him a thing or two about leaving me alone for so long.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Pours herself a shot and downs it immediately after Avalanche has their meeting over the Reactor 5 mission. She says they agreed to disagree over what to do as she got kicked out from the meeting. In Rebirth, she takes in one of Costa del Sol's namesake drinks after the events with Hojo.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: She's one of the two most morally upstanding characters, alongside Aerith, in a series which has otherwise quite morally grey heroes. An outright kind and selfless girl who doesn't have a mean bone in her body and is motherly and forgiving. No matter how many hardships she experienced and tragedies she has to endure, she'd always put others before herself, regardless of who they are, and goes out of her way to help them as best as she can even to her own detriment without asking for anything in return, not wanting anyone to suffer like she did. Even when she has a lot of rage and grief towards Shinra, it never fully consumes her, thus she doesn't let Avalanche's cause meant to take down Shinra blind her towards actual human tragedy around her, either caused by Shinra or Avalanche, even when it affects the Shinra employees.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Her two first and closest friends in Midgar were Marle and Barret, both being much older than she was. Due to the fact the friends on her age in Nibelheim left the village for Midgar, she grew up interacting with folks much older than her much more often, especially since she was in a Younger Mentor, Older Disciple position when she was the calisthenics instructor for the older villagers.
• Invulnerable Knuckles: While Tifa usually uses armored gloves to hit with, she is just as capable using her bare fists to fight monsters and mechs without harming her hands.
• Jiggle Physics: Not in her main outfit, which includes a sports bra, but her "Mature/Refined" dress in Remake and her "Shining Spirit" bikini in Rebirth provide a lot less support for her chest. Doing the sit up minigame in Rebirth will do some regardless of her outfit.
• Ki Manipulation: Used as Tifa's core gameplay mechanic. Unbridled Strength is her unique ability which temporarily bolsters her attack power by increasing the amount of Chi she uses. Several of her weapons also have cores that have a set probability of causing Tifa to automatically start a battle at a higher Chi level. And Chi-Trap is one of the final weapon skills she learns, which traps and immobilizes nearby enemies in a sphere of Chi.
• Kick Chick: While she uses her fists for most default attacks, her more powerful attacks use her feet, including her "Overpower" and "Dive Kick" moves, along with her "Somersault" Limit Break. Seeing as it is her main Limit Break, it's what she uses when dealing heavy damage in cutscenes. If she saves Cloud from Sephiroth's telekinesis boulder, she kicks the thing apart.
• Kimono Fanservice: She can wear one of three different dresses during her infiltration to Don Corneo's place, one of which is an elegant kimono.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Trace Of Two Pasts and Rebirth reveal that Tifa used to have a cat named Fluffy during her childhood in Nibelheim. She doesn't know what happened to her after the incident, until a late-game side quest in Rebirth reunites the two and she helps Fluffy make a new home in the rebuilt Nibelheim with her kittens.
• Kung-Fu Kid: Tifa became one of Zangan's best pupils while she was still in her early teens. In Rebirth she's even shown jumping and kicking away one of the flying monster attacking Cloud and Sephiroth. The Nibelheim Incident occurred before Zangan could teach her the final lessons of his Zangan-style martial arts, but she managed to keep training in Midgar and incorporate her own style and forms to complete her training.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: The Mythril Claw and Sonic Striker weapons highly favor magic and let Tifa make the most out of materia and her Chi-Trap ability.
  • In Rebirth, her Unfettering Fury doubles down and allows her to infuse her normal strikes with magic and leave magic mines to do continuous damage. Using her Crystal gloves and switching her great physical stat with her magical with the materia will allow her to deal stronger magical damage.
• Leg Focus: Tifa's miniskirt and form-fitting stockings put a lot of emphasis on her long, shapely legs. Even more apparent in one of the alternate costumes in the Don Corneo segment which puts her legs in full display.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Tifa is one to Cloud, as the biggest support pillar in his life Cloud has a pressing need to look after her and is often a mess when he thinks she is in danger he cannot help with. In Rebirth Sephiroth capitalizes on this and increases the divide between the two by gaslighting Cloud into thinking she is an imposter and nearly killing her. Notably, he completely shuts down when he thinks she is dead at his hands.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: Her hair falls down below her waist and is tied at the tips to form a dolphin-tail. Despite appearances between her and Aerith, Tifa is the most feminine woman in the party.
• Made a Slave: Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts reveals this is her oldest fear after hearing tales of Human Traffickers. Unfortunately for her, Tifa's life continuously puts her in danger of it once per game. Hearing that Gus was putting up a woman for sale in his arena ticks her off so much that after winning she kicks him right then and there and warns him that she will do worse if she hears him doing it again.
• Magic Enhancement: Tifa's key ability is "Unbridled Strength". Each time she uses it, it consumes a stack of ATB, but increases her basic attack damage, and swaps her unique attack for a more powerful one. It can be used multiple times. Each time Tifa uses her unique attack, she loses a level of unbridled strength. Rebirth adds with Unfettering Fury, a move that enhances her normal strikes with stagger boosting effects and leaves magical mines in her wake, and it also changes her unique attacks to more powerful but less stagger % increasing blows.
• Magikarp Power: If improperly used, her weaknesses become very apparent. Her damage dealing at base is the weakest of the group and her frailty can quickly become a liability. Many players pass her up for Cloud's greater base damage and tanking or Barret and Aerith's long-distance prowess. Figure out her ins and outs and you have a high-speed machine that brings stagger down before the enemy can get a hit off and deals damage that no-one can match. Rebirth makes Focused Strike a default ability and improves her dodge so that picking her up off the gate is easier.
• Martial Pacifist: While she has no issues with fighting monsters, she's more reluctant with killing people, even Shinra personnel, leaving the ones that were harassing Johnny alive but unconscious.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Tifa is a derivative of Tiferet (the other being Aerith), the sixth sefira in the kabbalistic Tree of Life. This sefira is associated with light, beauty, love, and compassion whose effect is to balance kindness and strength. It is opposed to Belphegor, a demon that seduces with shortcuts to riches and is not connected to the Malkhut (an attribute not created by God but its creations). All of these are exemplified by Tifa's relationships within the party, Shinra and Sephiroth.
  • With a last name of Lockhart she should think about opening up about her feelings more. There's always an air between her and Cloud that she wants to discuss their real feelings and memories, but she never does so. This extends to her other friends too, as she often buries her real feelings when talking to Avalanche when not in meetings.
• Minidress of Power: She's an acrobatic fighter wearing a mini-skirt, and her Remake design has pleated segments to her skirt to make it easier for her to perform her martial arts. She's also wearing a pair of black Modesty Shorts underneath them to preserve her modesty during combat.
• Missing Mom: Her mother Thea died when she was eight years old, and she ended up being raised mostly by her father.
• Mistaken for an Imposter: A subplot in Rebirth. During the Nibelheim Incident Cloud mentions finding Tifa lying on the ground, seemingly dead, after she attacked Sephiroth at the mako reactor. Sephiroth takes advantage of this by gaslighting Cloud into thinking the real Tifa is dead and that the Tifa traveling with the party is a Jenova offshoot impersonating her. Tifa is indignant when first confronted about it in Kalm, leading to them having their first fight. This reaches its climax in the Gongaga reactor where Sephiroth successfully brainwashes Cloud into attacking Tifa, leading her to fall into the mako.
• Morality Pet:
  • To Cloud. She's the one who gets him involved in helping the community and reins in his more violent solutions to problems like Johnny being a talker. Eventually, she notes that Cloud's "losing his edge". Late in Rebirth that even she isn't able to stem the feelings that Sephiroth instills into Cloud is a good indicator of how bad his control over Cloud is.
  • Also to Barret, when Tifa's considerate nature helps moderate his more aggressive demeanor at times.
• Ms. Fanservice: Downplayed. Tifa is a knockout, no arguments about that. But the game developers deliberately avoided the more "gratuitous" tropes, as had been happening in other games (like Dissidia). Aside from having a more reasonable figure, her outfit is designed to avoid (quote) "Unnatural movement" and preserve her modesty, while also having a fighting style that looks more like martial arts and less like gymnastics. The overall effect is to, once again, putting the focus on the strong characterization that she displayed back in the original game. On the other hand, her mature dress during the Wall Market segment shows a lot more skin, trading the Cleavage Window in favor of an Impossibly-Low Neckline and Sideboob. But even that's justified, given that Tifa's trying to look seductive to lure Don Corneo into a trap. Once Tifa's cover is blown, she goes right back to her default, more modest outfit.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Except for her barely visible abs, Tifa doesn't have the kind of muscular physique that's normally expected out of an athletic brawler/martial artist, instead looking no different than any other slender female in the game (e.g. Jessie, Scarlet, etc.), yet it doesn't stop her from Megaton-kicking big monsters like Eligor and displaying other feats of strength far above her appearance would suggest.
• My Eyes Are Up Here: While she doesn't say it, she seems to take note that Cloud is trying not to stare at her breasts while in her swimsuit and teases him for it. Played for Drama when she's forced to show him the scar on her chest Sephiroth gave her years ago.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The final blow of her Dolphin Flurry Limit is an uppercut as a dolphin appears alongside her, identical to the Dolphin Blow Limit in the first game that inspired the remake attack.
  • Enhanced Strike is a single, powerful punch, just like her original Final Heaven Limit, minus the explosion on impact.
  • Her "mature" dress is an updated version of the dress she wore in the original VII, complete with matching high heels (which now possess ankle-straps).
  • Her final pose during summoning is an exact recreation of her final magic pose from the original game.
• Near-Death Experience:
  • As a child, she tried to cross to Mount Nibel and fell off hitting her head and knocking her unconscious. Had Cloud not decided to follow her after her so-called friends abandoned her, she likely would not have survived.
  • Sephiroth slashing her during the Nibelheim Incident almost killed her and would have had Zangan not rescued her and brought her to Doctor Sheiran for medical treatment.
  • In the Gongaga reactor, Cloud is egged on by Sephiroth and convinced by him that she is an imposter, causing him to lash out and knock her into the mako. Then a Weapon eats her and carries her into the Lifestream, while there she sees the battle between the Whispers, Weapons and Sephiroth while memories of her past come rushing back. Visions of her friends give her the strength to survive while a vision of Cloud and Sephiroth taunts her over her powerless sway over Cloud's mind. In the end the Weapon returns her to the party, allowing them to realize the severity of Sephiroth's plans.
• Nice Girl: Tifa is a kind, altruistic, compassionate, laid-back woman with a prominent maternal streak and interacts with others in polite, understanding, and respectful way. She actively teaches Cloud life lessons and networking so that he can build better connections and form a reputation for his mercenary job, with Cloud viewing her as a patient teacher. She's also very dedicated to creating the most positive and communal environment possible within Sector Seven. She takes issues with Avalanche's more extreme methods to the point of getting kicked out of meetings, as well as being concerned for the well-being of even Shinra employees, such as recognizing them as just people who worked to support their loved ones and saving Shinra Middle Manager while saying that she doesn't want anyone to die. However, the games also deconstruct this and show what is nice and what is necessary aren't always the same thing, and that part of her niceness is a codependency streak she has a hard time without.
  • In Remake, she avoids keeping her actual feelings about the Mako Reactor job so not to dour everyone's mood, and as a result of their activity Shinra has all the evidence they need to drop a plate while putting the blame on Avalanche.
  • Rebirth explores a more flawed side to her, namely her need to be liked by everyone that sometimes comes at the expense of her better judgment, and in the past, even led to her throwing one person under the bus because it was the village's popular opinion to cast fault on that person for things they didn't actually do: Cloud himself, who saved Tifa's life when she tried to climb Mt. Nibel, fell, and got amnesia, and whom she never stood up for when her friends falsely accused him of putting her in danger in the first place, too afraid to go against the crowd and delve more into what really went down. Tifa is aware of this personality flaw, admits that she hates it about herself, and is determined to be better. She continuously looks out for Cloud and tries to get him to remember the truth of the Nibelhiem incident, but his fragile mental state means that she doesn't push the subject when their viewpoints differ and keeps covering up to the others the times his mind isn't his own.
• Not So Above It All: While usually the one to try keeping tensions down in the party, when Yuffie questions her on what the ratio Barret has of jerkface to good person underneath, Tifa can't help but say 45-55 is close. Even Barret can't believe Tifa is siding with her on that one.
• Number Two: By Rebirth she takes this role next to Cloud, as he often makes sure that she has his back on his latest decision. If Cloud isn't in the party she often takes the role to Barret, making sure his decisions are gone through smoother heads.
• Oblivious to Love: Tifa invokes this to deal with her Dude Magnet status, shown in Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts. She finds turning down men interested in her difficult as she knows it can hurt their feelings, thus she pretends to not pick up on their romantic cues, or dodging them with a vague reply if their intention is too obvious.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • She's usually the first to realize that Cloud is having a mental episode, and is especially wary of anything contextually involving Nibelheim. This only goes further in Rebirth when Cloud not only clearly has some sort of lying or conflicting memories of the incident, but is gradually degrading more and more mentally over the course of the story. Once he starts acting like and quoting Sephiroth directly, Tifa is visibly panicking because she's well aware that Cloud's not the one in control in these cases but chose to cover for him the whole time instead of relaying what she knows to the others.
  • Tifa has a much quicker one when a Weapon is about to eat her in the Gongaga reactor.
• Parental Substitute: Despite her youth, she acts as a mother/big sister figure to Marlene, taking care of her when Barret is not around.
• Picky Eater: Says she was one in her youth, but living in the slums meant she didn't have much choice but to grow out of it. She still doesn't like crab though, something she bonds with Cloud over.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: In Rebirth, when Tifa is in the Lifestream witnessing some of her memories of her loved ones, she sees Sephiroth taking Cloud with him due to his hold on him. She desperately begs him not to take Cloud away from her too, but Sephiroth mocks her that her voice can't reach him as Tifa then loses consciousness.
• Power Fist: Tifa can equip different gloves and claws as weapons.
• Primal Stance: Tifa adopts Red's attack pose alongside him during their Synergy ability and gets on all fours to pounce on the target with him.
• The Promise: When they were children, she had Cloud promise that after he became a SOLDIER that he would save her if she were ever in a pinch. Cloud later invokes this motive as to why he agrees to fight for Avalanche after the first mission, as he wanted Tifa to feel safer.
• Punched Across the Room: A common result of her hitting enemies in cutscenes. Even Sephiroth can be knocked back by her blows.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Many of Tifa's abilities include rapid volleys of punches.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: She's a brunette with long dark hair and pale skin, which also happens to complement her black and white Color Motif.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Aerith's Red. Where Tifa is more shy and meek, Aerith is more energetic and extroverted.
• Reluctant Warrior: While she's a loyal member of Avalanche, she is not convinced that bombing Mako Reactors is the solution to taking down Shinra and struggles to reconcile her cause with her conscience, refusing to dehumanize the Shinra employees but recognizing them as Punch Clock Villains instead, including when Barret tells her to hold on her hatred after the plate drop, of which she's actually angry at herself and Avalanche due to feeling that they pushed Shinra to drop the plate.
• Renaissance Man: Like Cloud, even though she won't admit it, she has a wide variety of talents; she's a highly skilled martial artist, the resident cook for AVALANCHE, a respected bartender, a talented pianist (who hasn't even practiced since she was a child), a dancer, and a risk-taking driver.
• Save the Villain: Briefly, when the party sees President Shinra dangling at the rooftop, Tifa attempted to run over towards him, before being stopped by Barret who takes her place. Tifa along with Aerith also pleaded for Barret to stop senselessly torturing President Shinra.
• Scars Are Forever: In Rebirth, she reveals to Cloud that she still has a scar on her chest from when Sephiroth slashed her during the Nibelheim incident. She even shows it to Cloud though the audience never sees it.
• Secret-Keeper: Of all the party members she is the one who most knows how bad Cloud's mental state really is, covering for him when she is knocked into the Lifestream in Gongaga and when he willingly gives the Black Materia to Sephiroth.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: She's dolled up pretty well when she goes undercover as a potential bridal candidate for Corneo. By default, she's bound to wear an updated version of the same purple dress she wore in the original VII (complete with matching heels, now with ankle-straps), but completing the side quests she lays out for you in Sector 7 can have her don instead either a black kimono or a silver qipao, complete with the respective hair decorations.
• She-Fu: Played With. A few of Tifa's specials make use of gratuitous acrobatics, such as flying kicks, heel kicks, doing a cartwheel in her summon animation and her signature Somersault ability from the original VII. Downplayed/Subverted in other respects; she moves like a martial artist, not a gymnast or cheerleader, and will also throw elbows, knee, and even shoulder charges her opponents. Justified when it comes to the dodging, considering what she has to go up against. However, she'll just hop to the side instead of flipping or cartwheeling.
• Shoryuken:
  • Her Whirling Uppercut ability is almost identical visually to the famous Shoryuken. Some dubs basically call it a Dragon Uppercut.
  • The final blow of Dolphin Flurry, her second Limit Break, is a water-based Uppercut.
• Sickly Child Grew Up Strong: Traces of Two Pasts and a flashback in Rebirth show that Tifa did not have the strongest constitution growing up, with her getting sick for several days after spraining her ankle, and her flashback shows that she was barely able to stand by the time she got to the rope bridge over the Gunnthra river, while Cloud didn't look winded at all in comparison. Between constant training and advice from Zangan, the support of her father and her own efforts after the Nibelheim incident, Tifa was able to become far hardier and stronger by the time the game begins.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: She's a Bare-Fisted Monk who wears a sleeveless tank top that leaves her arms bare.
• Slide Attack: Her Parry dodge in Remake had her sliding at ground-level while kicking forward, dealing Scratch Damage. Rebirth makes the sliding kick her default dodge, but removes the Scratch Damage.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: While always a part of her character in the original game, it is really emphasized here. In both the games and Trace of Two Pasts that everyone around Tifa considers her physical beauty first is an ongoing problem that she faces. When even Hojo is more impressed by her physical features than the Last of His Kind Red XIII, you know she has a problem.
• Spin Attack: In the middle of Dolphin Flurry, she simply weaponizes spinning in place in midair.
• Stance System: Rebirth gives her a new move, Untettering Fury, where she charges her gloves with magical energy and changes her moveset with stagger increasing blows to match.
• Standard Power-Up Pose: Strikes this pose when powering up her chi-level to 3.
• Street Smart: She's lived on her own in the slums for five years, and so has learned how to take care of herself. Most of Chapter 3 has her tutoring Cloud on how he can grow as a mercenary in the slum environment.
• Supermodel Strut: She sashays when she walks. Her pleated skirt draws attention to the swaying. The cutscenes actually take into consideration if she keeps up the sashaying or not depending on how serious the situation is, meaning she is doing it deliberately.
• Supreme Chef: An Informed Ability, as several NPCs comment on the quality of the food in Seventh Heaven.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Her compassion for anyone that can be affected by their mission leads her to voice concern for Shinra employees, despite her hatred for the company, something her Avalanche colleagues don't concern themselves with. She feels guilty watching the scared employees in the Shinra building after deactivating the sun lamps in Sector 4, and is the one to point out that most of Shinra's workers are just average people trying to make a living for their families, and that Avalanche's actions cause them grief too.
• Team Mom: Tifa has motherly qualities, acting as a support for others and she acts as a mediator between the more unruly members of the party. Ironically she is the youngest character in the party in Remake.
• Tears of Joy: She does this after watching Jessie's performance in LOVELESS during her date with Cloud at the Golden Saucer.
• Technicolor Eyes: She has red eyes, which compliment her red boots and arm vambrace.
• Tender Tears: Tifa is a gentle and kind-hearted woman who isn't afraid to cry around others in dire situations. In Remake, she cries over Jessie's death and later in Cloud's arms as he hugs her over losing everything again thanks to Shinra. In Rebirth, she weeps upon watching Jessie's performance in LOVELESS if accompanying Cloud as his date, and again when she sees a version of Aerith killed by Sephiroth.
• Three-Point Landing: Tifa seems to do it on reflex. She even does it multiple times in a single attack sometimes.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Plays with this trope somewhat in relation to Aerith. Tifa has a slightly tomboyish appearance, but her personality can be quite timid, and her interests are a mixture of tomboyish and girly interests. By contrast, Aerith has a girly appearance and girly interests, but a slightly tomboyish personality.
• Touched by Vorlons: Tifa's encounter with a Weapon seems to have given her a larger connection to the Lifestream, making her the second known character that Sephiroth communicates with telepathically after Cloud. Notably, in the ending she seems to see Aerith's blood disappear.
• True Sight: Possibly in Rebirth's ending, where she sees Aerith's blood disappear and reappear, and where Cloud sees Aerith she seems to see nothing. It's left vague which, if any, are the truth. The camera avoids showing the player her reaction to the scar in the sky Cloud sees on top of that.
• Twice Shy: If your relationship with Tifa is high enough, she and Cloud share a kiss during the Gold Saucer date. After they exit the ride, the two are very much flustered after the kiss and awkwardly try to lighten the mood as they return to their rooms.
• Twisted-Knee Collapse: Tifa drops this way in despair after the sector 7 pillar is destroyed.
• Unluckily Lucky: Tifa's life has a tendency to be both misfortunate and fortunate at the same time, and she has a rather high amount of Near-Death Experience to show for it. She fell down a ravine with Cloud as a child but she was saved by hikers, her hometown is burned down and she is left critically injured by Sephiroth but was then nursed back to health by Zangan, Dr. Shieran and a Shinra helicopter of all things, tricked into severe medical bills but has the bills removed when evidence suggests their real price was far lower, forced to see Sector 7 be destroyed but saved by a ropeway connected to Sector 6, and in a bout of delirium Cloud knocks her into the Lifestream were a Weapon eats her, but is then informed of the battle between the Planet and Sephiroth and safely returned afterwards. In a bit of gameplay integration, she has one of the highest luck stats for a character not built around getting it higher.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Being nice to Marco turns out to have been exactly the wrong thing to do. He's one of the people in the cult of Sephiroth, and his presence helps make things worse. If nothing else, it gives Cloud one hell of a scare.
• Water Is Womanly: Tifa is associated with water. She has a dolphin-themed hairstyle, uses water-themed attack with Dolphin Flurry as her Limit Break, and is a bartender who pours drinks. In spite of her tomboyish appearance, she's a kind, giving woman who acts as the Team Mom and is devoted to Cloud. Rebirth adds a scene where she travels through the Lifestream with an aquatic whale-like Weapon, giving her an inside look at the workings of Sephiroth's plan and possibly a connection to the Lifestream to see more of it later. Crossing with Ice Magic Is Water, she starts Rebirth with the ice materia and can easily acquire a skill to use icy impulse for an ice attack without the materia and buff the materia on top.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gives a small one to Cloud after he suggests killing her friend Johnny for mouthing off Jessie's involvement with Avalanche to a few Shinra soldiers.
  Tifa: Cloud... You're scaring me.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Tifa is noticeably frazzled in the Train Graveyard and the thoughts of ghosts terrify her. In Rebirth, the thought of a ghost in the Shinra manor unnerves her so much she doesn't want anything to do with it.
• Workout Fanservice: One of the minigames has her doing pull-ups at the gym against the gym members, and her grunts during this game sound like she's having an orgasm, particularly when she gets fatigued when going up against more skilled opponents like Jay and Jules. To get the level 59 keycard, she shuffles around and hangs off several light fixtures. The camera angles don't get too gratuitous, but the Fanservice is definitely there. The minigame returns in Rebirth and can now be done while she’s wearing a bikini.
• You Killed My Father: She has a personal beef with Sephiroth because he was the one who murdered her father during the Nibelheim Incident. She attempted to get revenge on him then, but came nowhere close to achieving it and almost got killed by Sephiroth.

Aerith Gainsborough

Voiced By: Briana White (English), Maaya Sakamoto (Japanese), Loren Allred (English and Japanese, singing voice)^{Foreign VAs} Céline Melloul (French), Manja Doering (German)
Young Aerith Voiced By: Capri Oliver (English), Chihiro Tanaka (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs} Leslie Lipkins (French), Verena Dienst (German)

"I just want to do everything in my power to help... all of you, and the Planet."

A flower peddler Cloud meets after his first mission with Avalanche. She is secretly the last survivor of the Cetra — an ancient race with mysterious abilities and an intricate connection to the Planet — and Shinra has been after her since she was a child, hoping to exploit her powers and find what they believe is the Cetra's "promised land". In battle, she wields a staff but primarily uses a variety of spells that don't require materia.

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• Action Girl: For a flower girl, Aerith is a pretty tough cookie; contrasting the brawler Tifa and ninjutsu fighter Yuffie, she prefers to blast her enemies away with magic. She even becomes momentarily physical kicking Scotch in the testicles and hitting another goon with a folding chair during her time at Don Corneo’s mansion.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • In the original game her Limits were defensive and supportive, focused on healing and protecting the party. In Remake her unique abilities are a mix of defensive and offensive options that let her be more proactive in battle. Additionally, instead of just whacking enemies with her staff like in VII, here she fires small orbs of magic from her staff as her basic attack.
  • Rebirth gives her the opportunity to learn how to channel and manipulate the Lifestream in the Temple of the Ancients, something that was only possible for her to do at the end of the original game right after her death. This ability not only enables her to reassemble parts of the temple's pathways, but also provides a number of buffs in proportion to the amount of Lifestream power accumulated.
• Adaptational Superpower Change: In the original game, Aerith was powerful, but her abilities were focused entirely on standard Final Fantasy white magic used in conjunction with her attunement with the Lifestream. In this version of the story, Aerith's "future" self who flees across time and space from Sephiroth is a Dimension Traveller, able to perceive, breach, and malleate the Planet's different possible futures. She's also implied to bequeath Cloud the same abilities, given his actions during Rebirth's climax and what he can see in the ending sequence.
• Alternate Self: In the new timeline created at the end of Remake, Aerith is rescued by Red XIII—who sacrifices himself to crash the helicopter carrying them—and Zack Fair in the terrier-Stamp timeline, but is left in a coma. Zack brings her back to Elmyra's and helps look after her, which the beagle-Stamp's Aerith senses through the Lifestream. In the long-haired Chihuahua-Stamp timeline, an Aerith who never left Midgar magically pulls the "main" beagle-Stamp timeline Cloud to her world to spend more time with him, but when Sephiroth finds them she gives Cloud the White Materia and sends him back to the beagle-Stamp timeline with it.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Rebirth ends by deliberately leaving it unclear whether Aerith dies or not as her presence continues to be seen by Cloud, leading to the question of whether she's a hallucination fantasized about by Cloud in denial, a spirit, or if she was indeed saved but entered into a "different" unknown state of being — either as a result of timeline distortions, the powered up White Materia, or both. Notably, her burial scene from the original game isn't replicated in Rebirth, and while Tifa sees brief flashes of Aerith's death and empty air where he sees Aerith, it isn't made clear if what she's seeing is "real" or if it's actually Cloud's point of view that's real. The other party members' reactions are also kept deliberately ambiguous — all of which amounts to an exercise in keeping the player guessing.
  • There are also several hints that other versions of Aerith besides the one from the Chihuahua timeline are actively looking out for the party and the "main" Beagle timeline's Aerith. During Costa del Sol, Aerith tells Cloud that he is going to meet "her future self" one day, to which he says he will keep an eye out. When Tifa nearly dies in the Lifestream, she sees visions of her friends telling her to fight on, and most do calmly but the vision of Aerith yells her name and arrives like she ran, and in the montage of all of them only her face is visible, implying that she is more real than the others. At the Forgotten Capital, when Cloud approaches the praying Aerith at the altar, she can be heard "talking to herself" that she doesn't know the correct way to pray and is looking for guidance, the implication being she's not just monologuing, but actually having a conversation with a more knowledgeable Aerith from another plane of existence. The Aerith who shows up to help Cloud in the final battle doesn't actually say anything one way or another if she is indeed the same Aerith who has fought alongside him up to this point, though her dialogue subtly implies she isn't. ^note "I saw what you did back there, Cloud. Thank you." is a very odd choice of words for something you were right there to witness, but makes a lot more sense as a different version of Aerith observing events from afar. That said, with Aerith's seemingly expanded powers, at this stage there may not even be a meaningful distinction, which adds even more ambiguity.
• Apologetic Attacker: In battle, after an enemy is staggered, she may say "sorry, but we gotta do it!"
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: At the end of Rebirth, she appears to have undergone this transformation following the "death" of her "main" timeline self, with her now seemingly gaining control of the White Whispers and the ability to influence other timelines, but at the apparent cost of her corporeal form that leaves only Cloud being able to see her.
• Badass Adorable: Aerith is a beautiful, outgoing young woman who employs powerful magic to defend her friends and against their foes.
• Badass Boast: Does this in front of Sephiroth of all people in Remake.
  Cloud: He's tough.
  Aerith: Yeah, so what? Screw him.
• Balance Buff: She's far more effective in combat in Rebirth than in Remake. Her unique command Tempest (which wasn't very useful) and Fleeting Familiar (one of her best abilities for the damage boost it provided her) are integrated into her base moveset as effects of her Charged Attack. In place of Tempest she has Ward Shift, which teleports her to any active ward she has set up (fixing the issue of players having to stay within them for her to get the benefit), and if she has no active wards then she merely teleports a short distance away from enemies (a big improvement to her slow mobility). She later gets the ability Radiant Ward, which patches up her most glaring weaknesses; with it active her attacks deal more damage, build ATB faster, hit much faster and are harder to avoid, she's immune to damage while casting spells (though she can still be interrupted by sufficiently strong moves) and her dodge is improved to move her further so she can evade attacks easier. These changes all together make Aerith a much more mobile and active character who can build ATB gauge faster and toss out spells more safely.
• Barrier Warrior: Aerith's Lustrous Shield ability lets her create a magical shield that can block enemy projectiles and damage enemies that blunder into it.
• Batman Gambit: In order to become a more effective threat against Sephiroth and Jenova, one version of Aerith from an Alternate Timeline—Stamp being a long-haired Chihuahua—made the choice to never leave Midgar, pretending to have "resigned" to fate's whims so to keep the Whispers off her back while she secretly devoted her time to safeguarding her White Materia from them, making sure that it wouldn't be sapped of its power. Knowing that Sephiroth and the Whispers would fail to notice what she's really up to until she makes her critical move, Aerith summons the "main" beagle-Stamp timeline Cloud to her realm at a precise moment to give him the now fully powered materia just before Sephiroth arrives to kill her, gambling her hopes onto Cloud successfully delivering this materia, in turn, to his timeline's Aerith to replace her non-functioning materia, which he does upon meeting the other Aerith in the Sleeping Forest. Though the exact details aren't revealed, this seems to give Aerith access to even greater power than she had before, allowing her to control or at least work alongside her own version of the Whispers (represented by their white coloring), which may or may not have played a role in her continuing to exist in some form, if not outright surviving, Sephiroth's blade when he comes to kill her again at the story's climax.
• Beam Spam: While her "Radiant Ward" ability is active, her normal attacks change into her firing off a series of magical beams.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: Rebirth gives Aerith a chance to shine with her exceptional singing skills during the finale of Loveless in the Golden Saucer. It also helps that she has a budding talent in song-writing.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Aerith is a picturesque example of feminine, graceful beauty despite her mundane fashion choice, and also possesses incredible selflessness and compassion.
• Betty and Veronica: Played With when compared to Tifa in the love triangle with her and Cloud. Aerith is not the Ms. Fanservice that Tifa is, but the latter is also the more meek and shy Girl Next Door Childhood Friend to Cloud, where Aerith instead is more extroverted and wild, with a mischievous streak, despite the fact both are extremely kind souls.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Aerith is kind and cheerful, and puts up with Cloud's standoffishness with remarkable patience, but can't stand it when people make lascivious remarks towards her.
  Aerith: [when one of Corneo's men says she seems a little homely but could clean up nicely] Requesting permission to kill.
  Aerith: [to Cloud, after a spectator in the Colosseum makes a lewd joke about her pole and being a stripper] OK, now I'm mad!
  • This carries over into gameplay, especially in Rebirth, where her astronomically high Magic stat means that this sweet-natured White Mage will delete anything she hits with her spells. It's highly likely for Aerith to be the first party member to run up against the damage cap, as a third-tier elemental spell cast from her is almost a guaranteed 9999 damage. If given the break damage limit accessory, her spells can hit for so much damage that she's in a league of her own.
• Big Damn Heroes: In Rebirth, while fighting the Turks on a raised platform at the Temple of the Ancients, Cloud gets knocked off by Rude and almost plummets to his doom, only for Aerith to use her powers to save him from falling. During the final battle, Sephiroth tries to overwhelm Cloud with the power of his Black Whispers, only for the White Whispers to interfere and an empowered version of Aerith herself to join the battle, turning what might have been another defeat for Cloud into Sephiroth's biggest loss yet.
• Big Good: She becomes this when the party begins to pursue Sephiroth in Remake, being the one with the most knowledge of his plans and the power to alter them. Rebirth seemingly walks back on it at first, since the Whispers having taken her memories means she's reverted to being just as in the dark about Sephiroth's full plans as the rest of the party, but then it's played straight again by the alternate Aerith who helps Cloud by giving him an empowered White Materia to then deliver to her other counterpart, causing that Aerith, in turn, to awaken to a higher power by gaining control of her own White Whispers to combat Sephiroth's black ones, along with the return of her omniscient memories, as she comes to Cloud's side when he needs her the most to directly challenge Sephiroth himself.
• Big Sister Instinct: She's well-liked by the kids in the slums, and when she goes to Sector 7, she stops when she sees Betty wandering around lost and carries her to the evacuation point then goes to get Marlene. She's gentle and patient with the little girls, even offering to trade herself to the Turks in exchange for Marlene's safety.
• Braids of Action: She keeps her long hair in a braid during combat, which prevents it from spilling everywhere.
• Breeding Slave: This is Hojo's plan for her, anyway. Not for himself, but for SOLDIERs and if he could control him, Sephiroth. Luckily, she is rescued by Cloud and the party before this can happen. Even Shinra didn't like the implications either.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: The assertive but kindly and compassionate Aerith shares this dynamic with the brooding, stoic, and troubled Cloud.
• But Thou Must!:
  • Do whatever Aerith says throughout her introduction chapter and the subsequent Wall Market chapter. If you try to leave at any point in either section, she won't allow it. That includes a minigame where Cloud has to sneak out of her house. If Aerith catches him, she forces him to go back to his room and, even if you make it outside, she still catches him and makes him take her with him. Cloud lampshades it himself when he finally meets up with Tifa at Don Corneo's palace and she tries to talk Aerith out of confronting Corneo:
  Cloud: [to Tifa, in resignation] Don't even bother trying to talk her out of it.
  Aerith: [smugly] Aww! Cloud gets me! Took you long enough. [playfully smacks him on the arm]
  • In Rebirth there is no way to skip out the date she arranges for her and Cloud no matter what choice the player picks.
• Canon Character All Along: It's difficult to explain. The Aerith the team know from the end of Remake and most of Rebirth is not the same version as the original Aerith, but only because the Whispers took away her memories of future when making physical contact with her. The version of her that's been spread out across reality, however, is implied to be the exact same Aerith from the original game, her various selves merging and pooling their knowledge together as she strives to defeat Sephiroth across time, space, and dimensions once and for all. And once Rebirth ends, "past" Aerith might have merged with her as well.
• Chairman of the Brawl: Cheerfully brings a folding chair down on one of Don Corneo's lackeys.
• Character Death: Happens at the end of Rebirth, but an ambiguous case this time, and not directly at the hands of Sephiroth as Cloud actually manages to prevent Sephiroth from directly impaling her. Rather, timeline distortions seemingly cause her fate to snap back to what it was. However, another time distortion occurs shortly afterward, seemingly undoing the previous one as she then wakes up and smiles at Cloud. Aerith continues to maintain a presence after this, though she's only seen interacting with Cloud, with Red XIII and Barret acknowledging her ambiguously, which leaves things unclear whether said presence is a spirit from the Lifestream, Cloud fantasizing about her survival as his mind further breaks down, or if she actually did survive but entered into a different kind of existence as a result of the distortions.
• Character Check: One of the most notable examples from the entire cast. In the original game, Aerith had a free-spirited, slightly tomboyish personality that showed she had a lot of attitude despite what her appearance may imply, but later works in the larger Compilation of FFVII made her a beacon of Incorruptible Pure Pureness with none of her previous edge. As such, Remake brings back the mischief, feistiness and snark that Aerith had previously in full force (despite the fact that she still is an Incorruptible Pure Pureness). Some of her traits being the result of being a Satellite Love Interest to Zack are also brought back in line with the original game - whereas Crisis Core had Zack gift her a pink ribbon, in Remake flashbacks show her as a child already wearing a bow. Downplayed as there are still nods to the compilation, such as her mentioning she used to sell flowers in the park (though in present day she uses a flower basket).
• Character Exaggeration: Downplayed. Her playful snarkiness is noticeably dialed up in Remake; she teases Cloud by pretending to lose her balance while walking across a pipe, and gently mocks him over his aloof attitude.
• Charged Attack: Her Tempest ability places a remote-activated mine that can be charged up before it's placed, increasing the damage it deals once detonated.
• City Mouse: Aerith has lived virtually her entire life under the steel sky of Midgar and is often unaccustomed to life outside the city. This comes up a few times in Rebirth, where she has trouble mountain climbing and doesn't know what a smoke signal is.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: A very downplayed case, but Aerith does show some signs of jealousy on several occasions:
  • Aerith is the only one of the girls who questions Cloud's relationship with Jessie if she is taken as Cloud's companion during the first visit to the Gold Saucer, and continues to probe Cloud even when he denies they were a couple.
  • If Cloud accompanies Tifa during the first date sequence and they run into Aerith in Speed Square, she even admits to being "a teensy bit jealous". While she plays this off as it being due to her being by herself to explore the park which is "not much fun", it's strongly hinted that she would like to be exploring the park with Cloud. She then makes a comment about finding someone else to go with her, which implies she herself is trying to make Cloud jealous. It's also worth noting that if Cloud accompanies Yuffie, while Aerith does query if it's a date showing a hint of jealousy, when Cloud asserts that it's "absolutely not" Aerith immediately drops the subject, and decidedly does not comment about finding anyone else to accompany her. If Cloud is by himself, Aerith uses a similar line to Tifa's sequence that hints that she'd like him to accompany her, but she is only envious of all the other couples in general terms, instead of jealous of Tifa specifically.
  • When Cissnei comments that she knows Cloud (which Cloud doesn't remember), Aerith's reaction immediately prompts Cissnei to clarify that it's "not like that".
• Combat Medic: Aerith is the go-to healer of the party who's also proficient in casting offensive magic.
• Combat Pragmatist: Yes, really. Aerith may not be a trained fighter like the rest of the cast, but she's been living in the Slums for most of her life and knows how to defend herself.
  • When she and Tifa have to deal with Corneo's Mooks, rather than do anything flashy, she trips one of them by pulling a rug from under him before bashing him over the head with a chair.
  • In gameplay, if she gets caught by an enemy and for some reason can't use her magic, she'll whack them with her staff instead, potentially causing them to flinch and give her the chance to get away (self-defense 101 right there).
• Compliment Backfire: Corneo's goons actually did like what they saw when they met Aerith, but their compliments came off very backhanded.
  Goon: [enthusiastically] She's kinda cute! Homely but cute!
  Aerith: Excuse you.
  2nd Goon: Yeah, I think she'll clean up nicely!
  Aerith: Cloud, requesting permission to kill.
• The Confidant:
  • Early in Rebirth, Tifa confides in Aerith that by her account Cloud wasn't present during the Nibelheim Incident. It's implied their conversation includes that Zack was the second SOLDIER at Nibelheim as well, as they both later talk about Zack in Gongaga.
  • Until Cosmo Canyon, she's the only person Nanaki shows his true personality to.
• Cool Shades: Whenever Aerith performs her Synergy ability with Barret in Rebirth, they both put on sunglasses while striking cool poses—invoking this trope—right before unleashing a simultaneous barrage of magic blasts and gunfire with their respective weapons.
• Covert Pervert: Aerith usually puts on an air of The Ingenue, but during the Honeybee Inn section, she has some... interesting reactions regarding Cloud's showguy dance, followed by piqued interest in his crossdressing. As the show reaches its climax, she even starts to sound like she's panting with excitement.
  Aerith: Keep it up Cloud! Work it!
• Crippling Overspecialization: Aerith deals 100% magical damage, even with her basic attacks. While this isn't an issue most of the time, running into a magic resistant or immune enemy takes away her offensive capabilities, necessitating either a swap out or having her focus on healing/support.
• The Cutie: Aerith's sweet personality and enduring optimism makes her eligible for this trope.
• Damsel in Distress: Happens to her once, and for justified reason. After Aerith saves Marlene, Tseng ambushes the two of them inside the Seventh Heaven bar with an offer to escort Marlene safety out of the collapsing Sector 7 slums via helicopter, in exchange for Aerith surrendering herself. With no time to left to spare, Aerith accepts this condition and is then taken away to Shinra.
• Dance Battler: Aerith's fighting style is sprinkled with graceful spins and twirls of her staff, while shooting beams of light at her enemies.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She may not show it, but Aerith has endured a lot of hardships ever since she was a child. Captured by Shinra shortly after she was born, she spent her earliest childhood years living as a laboratory captive, forced to watch as her mother Ifalna suffered through the inhumane experiments conducted by Hojo. Both mother and child would later escape from their hellish environment, but by then Ifalna's injuries already proved too severe, and she soon died in front of Aerith's eyes. It was only good fortune that a kind passerby managed to find the young Aerith, who raised her in Ifalna's place. She had a lonely childhood even after escaping Hojo's lab.
• Deadpan Snarker: A lot of her dialogue with Cloud is her poking fun at him, especially when Cloud plays up his badass ex-SOLDIER persona, often flipping his words around on him. Aerith is also often very positive when Cloud partakes in various minigames and does well at them, but if he performs badly she is very prone to making snarky comments about Cloud's poor display of skills in response.
• Defiant Captive: While held in Hojo's lab, she refuses to be cowed by him and spends the entire time he's in the midst of Evil Gloating and explaining how he dissected her mother's corpse glaring at him silently. It's only when Hojo turns away and leaves that she finally breaks.
• Determinator: Thanks to Character Development, especially upon fully accepting her Cetra heritage and her duty to safeguard the planet, Aerith is resolved to do everything in her power to stop Shinra, Sephiroth and Jenova, even if it means undertaking great risks and putting herself in harm's way. This is made even more poignant with the knowledge that Sephiroth is actively hunting down Aeriths of other timelines and killing them off so that they won't pose a threat to his plans. A lesser person would've fallen to despair ages ago and just quietly accepted their fate, yet one version of Aerith from the long-haired Chihuahua timeline still pulls off a successful Batman Gambit by giving her powered up White Materia to her counterpart from the Beagle timeline, further strengthening that Aerith and making her even more determined than ever to put an end to Sephiroth and Jenova.
• Deuteragonist: While Cloud is the protagonist, Aerith plays a very crucial role throughout the games due to her scant knowledge of the original 1997 timeline along with her being the last of the Cetra and the most direct threat to Jenova and Sephiroth's plans. This is further demonstrated by the credits for Remake and Rebirth billing her voice actress second in the cast, right after Cloud's VA.
• Died in Your Arms Tonight: At the end of Rebirth, one version of Aerith falls in Cloud's arms after a timeline distortion causes her fate to revert back to its intended outcome of dying at Sephiroth's hands, though it's left ambiguous if another version of her lives on thanks to Cloud successfully blocking the attack earlier, which created a branching timeline.
• Difficult, but Awesome: In Rebirth, Aerith has terrible defense, poor speed, and builds very little ATB with her default attack, making her a liability at the beginning of most fights. But with the correct combination of skills and wards, plus smart use of synergy abilities, she has some of the highest damage and evasive potential of anyone in the party, effortlessly warping around the battlefield while blasting enemies to pieces with enhanced magic.
• Dimension Traveller: It's heavily implied that certain versions of Aerith are capable of doing this, along with possessing knowledge of all their other selves. One such Aerith confers similar abilities to Cloud by handing him her White Materia, as he is then able to perceive the overlapping folds of reality from then on unlike the rest of the party.
• Disappears into Light: At the end of Rebirth, after Aerith helps Cloud chase Sephiroth away she stands back to back with him and holds his hand before disappearing into wisps of glowing green Lifestream.
• Dream Walker: Aerith is able to converse with Cloud while he's dreaming in both Remake and while he is unconscious after the Temple of the Ancients sequence in Rebirth. When her alternate self summons Cloud, she even refers to it as "my dream", though she's clearly simplifying for Cloud in this instance. Notably, Aerith's abilities also extend to some level of influence over the real world, as Cloud is able to pass Aerith her empowered White Materia while dreaming, and physically takes possession of the empty one, despite being unconscious the entire time.
• Dump Stat: Very nearly, as her Strength stat has almost no use given that her basic attack runs on her sky-high Magic stat. However, in a well-planned case of Gameplay and Story Integration, if the enemy is stricken by her staff while she's casting a spell or she hits something while under Toad status, that damage, and only that damage, scales off of her Strength stat.
• Dying Declaration of Love: In Rebirth, an alternate version of Aerith takes Cloud into another dimension to talk to him and give him her White Materia to counter the Black Materia and confesses that, while unsure whether it's love per se, she has strong feelings for Cloud and encourages him not to blame himself for whatever might happen next.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In Remake, she appears in two separate scenes in the early chapter (the game's opening scene in which she's actually the very first character seen, then after the bombing mission where Cloud runs into her on the upper plate of Sector 1) before her formal introduction in chapter 8 where she becomes a party member.
• Eating the Eye Candy: Aerith's clearly enjoying Cloud's dance-off with Andrea at the Honey Bee Inn way too much.
• Energy Ball: She shoots motes of light at enemies for her basic attacks.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: In Rebirth, during an intimate conversation with Cloud at Costa del Sol, Aerith admits that she hasn't forgotten all the horrible things that Hojo did to herself and her mom, and how she can't help but want to inflict cruelty upon him in return. Considering how forgiving and all-loving she usually is, Aerith's hatred towards Hojo is a testament to how much of a Hate Sink scumbag that guy is.
• Face Death with Dignity: In Rebirth, one version of Aerith from an alternate timeline summons Cloud to her reality in order to give him her White Materia, then gently pushes him back into his reality as soon as Sephiroth enters her church, knowing that he's about to kill her.
• Fairy Companion: Aerith's Fleeting Familiar ability conjures up a small fairy Familiar that will attack enemies whenever she does, helping her rack up damage and ATB faster. In Rebirth this is no longer an ability but part of her regular moveset, as she can now summon her familiar by simply charging her regular attack.
• Flower Motifs: Aerith is strongly associated with flowers as usual, symbolic of her connection to the planet which allows her to grow life from land that is otherwise barren of natural growth. This extends to her attacks and abilities, the rune of Arcane Ward being flower-shaped, her Tempest spreading flower petals and Lustrous Shield being shaped like a large flower blossom. Rebirth focuses on this and shows that flowers are a recurring symbol of her power and presence across the worlds. During the final battle, Zack finds himself in a doomed world that still has blooming flowers and is aided by a forcefield blossoming out of a magical flower implied to be Aerith's doing.
• Flowers of Femininity: She's one of the main heroines of the story, with a gentle and assertive feminity and a major Flower Motif.
• Foil: To Tifa. They are Cloud's main love interests and have different ways of keeping their feelings to themselves. Tifa bottles them up and finds other ways to liven the mood while Aerith is a Stepford Smiler who keeps up her smiling face in spite of how scared and lonely she really is. Both are very kind, compassionate and selfless young women, but while Aerith is more energetic and extroverted, Tifa is a little shy and quieter. Later in Rebirth, Tifa's goal is to keep Cloud grounded while trying to find the truth of their memories, while Aerith opts to take Cloud to other worlds in order to build a better future and to help him directly against Sephiroth's more otherworldly attempts to overpower or influence him, even if it means also loosening his grip on reality in the meantime. Lastly, both of them carry scars from a Dark and Troubled Past that they are trying to move forward from, but while Aerith is able to focus on the future and let the past rest, even if she has to be a Stepford Smiler to do so, Tifa remains shackled and weakened by hers, as explored throughout Rebirth and Traces of Two Pasts, the latter of which even lampshades the dichotomy through the book's cover: Aerith is shown standing under white text and facing upwards with an expression that conveys clarity and hope, whereas Tifa is standing under black text with a downcast look that indicates a troubled mind wrestling with doubts and insecurity.This is also shown in how both have the same roots in their name, the Tiferet, but neither shares a syllable. Aerith has the second half to show how she is a new part of his life. This even translates to their synergy abilities with Cloud in Rebirth, which provide access to all four different buffs to him.
• Foreseeing My Death: It's strongly implied in Remake that Aerith has memories of the original 1997 timeline and knows she's fated to die, and may even know when and how, because in a dream-vision, she warns Cloud not to fall in love with her while clasping her hands in prayer as she did when Sephiroth killed her in the original Final Fantasy VII. Rebirth confirms she did possess memories of the original timeline, but lost them to the Whispers when she rebelled against them.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When Reno arrives in the Sector 5 church, Aerith introduces Cloud as a SOLDIER and her bodyguard, and makes a comment about it not being too different from mercenary work. When Cloud pauses at this, she hastily claims she guessed he was a merc from his sword. While she may have figured he was a SOLDIER from the uniform, it's a stretch to assume Cloud is a mercenary just due to his weapon. This is the first clue that Aerith already knows things about the original game's story that she shouldn't, which becomes much more obvious in later chapters until it's all but directly spelled out.
  • For the future games, Aerith's actions and stated intentions frequently contradict each other. She claims that she wants to stop Sephiroth from messing with destiny yet becomes a key player that helps set his plan in motion, albeit for her own separate reasons. It can almost seem like Aerith is being tormented by the situation, caught between her preordained duty to preserve destiny as the planet dictates versus her own desire to live and seek out a better, alternate path.
  • In Rebirth, during an intimate conversation with Cloud at Costa del Sol, Aerith makes a cryptic comment about the future, and that she will be "counting on you" when the time comes. Cloud thinks Aerith was talking to him, but she makes it clear that she was actually referring to a version of herself from the future... hinting that she does know more than she lets on.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: With Barret. She only gets one battle together with him (the Arsenal) and never really has a direct conversation with him. This gets corrected by the release of Intergrade, though.
• Friend to All Children: She’s very well-liked by the children of the Sector 5 slums and during the Sector 7 plate collapse she personally saves both Marlene and her friend Betty. This also extends to the ghostly children in the Train Graveyard, as she can sense their true feelings.
• Friendless Background: In Remake she is shown a vision by the Eligor of a time when she was seemingly forgotten by the other kids while playing Hide-and-Seek. In Rebirth she notes several times that she would have loved to have had a friend growing up, and she is shown to carry some bitterness at the loneliness this has caused her.
• The Gadfly: Aerith shows herself to have a mischievous sense of humor, and practically salivates at the realization that Cloud needs to be Disguised in Drag. She's quite fond of making people, especially Cloud, trip over their words, as well as pranking and confusing them.
  (during her Gold Saucer date sequence)
  Aerith: Just so happens the Skywheel's running a special for couples.
  Cloud: For couples? As in...?
  Aerith: I'll leave that up to your imagination. It's more fun that way.
  
  (after pulling a joke on Cloud in a Costa del Sol side quest... which is also a date sequence)
  Cloud: You're... screwing with me, right?
  Aerith: I guess we'll see, won't we?
• Gemstone Assault: A fully charged Tempest will generate a magic crystal on impact, one that Aerith can detonate for a large amount of damage.
• Genki Girl: An extremely kind example, but she's still a very outgoing, cheerful and energetic young lady.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: She's overall elegant and graceful, but also energetic, playful and cheerful to the point of being slightly tomboyish at times.
• Girly Run: Aerith walks and runs with a feminine stride, swaying her arms around with every step. Another point of contrast between Aerith and Tifa is that Aerith doesn't stop under any circumstance. Trailers for Rebirth do show she adopts a more sprinting run outside Midgar.
• Glass Cannon: Squishy Wizard though she may be, Aerith's magic stat eclipses any other characters by a fair amount, letting her rack up incredibly high hits with her spells especially when combined with Arcane Ward.
• Green-Eyed Monster: While she tries to keep it to herself, Aerith is highly envious of the fact that Cloud and Tifa have childhood memories of each other, awkward and often unflattering as they are. This stems from her own lack of any friends growing up. In Nibelheim, she admits this to Cloud while sitting on the rebuilt water tower that she hates herself for this and doesn't want to take it out on them. Subtly, it is shown that Aerith has a streak of showing her history with Cloud and the others to make up for lost time.
• Groin Attack: Ends up kicking Scotch in his groin after he discovers that she was the one fighting at the underground coliseum.
• Hairstyle Inertia: During flashbacks of her as a child, she is seen sporting the exact same hairstyle that she does as an adult.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Only her mother Ifalna was a Cetra while her father was a human, which makes Hojo consider her a "lesser" specimen compared to Ifalna.
• Hammerspace: Aerith's staff appears in her hands when fights begin and when they end it vanishes as she tucks it away. The animations imply the staves are collapsible for storage, but they're still far too big to just be hidden in a pocket or inside her jacket. Cutscenes tend to have her suddenly holding it when she needs it. This is compared to the other three whose weapons are always visible (though Barret and Tifa's weapons are strapped to their arms, so that is unavoidable).
• Happily Adopted: She loves Elmyra as though she was her real mother, and by Elmyra's own words, it didn't take long for either of them to start feeling like they were family.
• Hates Being Alone:
  • She hides it behind a cheerful, positive demeanor, but it's revealed in Chapter 11 of Remake that Aerith is secretly afraid of abandonment, which the monster Eligor tries to exploit by casting a hallucination spell that makes her relive a childhood memory of being left all alone during a game of hide-and-seek. Her loneliness is increased tenfold when knowing she's the last Cetra, as well. She's close to crying in relief when Cloud and Tifa manage to save her from Eligor.
  • Rebirth shows that her fear of loneliness stems from the death of her mother, when Aerith had to walk around the Sector 4 station asking for a doctor, only to be rebuffed by everyone save for Elmyra.
• Head-Turning Beauty: Normally avoided in-game since people tend to overlook her due to her mundane everyday outfit but should Cloud manage to get her most expensive dress for use during the Don Corneo mission, Aerith's true beauty is unleashed, attracting a large crowd of admirers as soon as she walks out into the streets while wearing it. Even Cloud is utterly mesmerized the moment he lays eyes on her and becomes a stuttering mess for a bit.
• Healing Winds: She retains the ability to heal allies with her Healing Wind Limit Break.
• Heritage Disconnect: Despite being the last of the Ancients, she has little knowledge of their culture and customs. This causes her some angst in that the one thing she is singled out for by so many is something she has little actual connection with. Throughout Rebirth both the Gi and the Temple's guardians regard her as little more than one by diluted blood.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Despite their mutual romantic interest toward Cloud, she’s shown to be very close to Tifa as a friend and has been shown to stand up for her on at least one occasion.
• Hidden Depths:
  • When sneaking into Junon while disguised as a Shinra trooper, Aerith is forced to perform a complex military drill alongside Cloud and Tifa. Despite having absolutely no experience with this sort of thing, she not only keeps up with Cloud but mirrors his movements perfectly.
  • Aerith also turns out to be a surprisingly talented singer and composer, despite no known history of formal training. Her powerful vocals are shown in full glory when she performs her own self-written song, "No Promises to Keep", in front of a sold out crowd inside the Gold Saucer theater, to great acclaim.
• Hollywood Homely: In-Universe. Although Aerith is a very pretty girl, many doubt her potential to be Corneo's bride because of her dowdy clothes and lack of upfront sex appeal. This irritates her to no end.
• I Am Not Pretty: If you get the low-tier dress for Aerith (the basic pink one), she'll think she looks awful in it and is even embarrassed to let Cloud see her. She's still a natural beauty, of course, but can't help but feel dispirited due to the unflatteringly bland dress, which actually represents a downgrade from her usual outfit.
• I Choose to Stay: The ending of Rebirth has Aerith, or at least some version of her in another timeline, stay behind in the Forgotten Capital to continue praying for Holy while Cloud and the others resume their pursuit of Sephiroth.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: In Rebirth, she admits to wanting a normal life while making a speech in front of the people of Cosmo Canyon.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: More specifically wanted, past tense, and this is one reason why she so strongly values the party's companionship. When Cloud upsets Tifa during the opening chapter of Rebirth, Aerith tells Cloud the following day that she would have given anything to have friends while growing up, and not to take Tifa for granted.
• Impractically Fancy Clothes: Should Cloud be able to get Aerith the most expensive dress, he and all other onlookers are blown away by how good she looks in it as Johnny rolls out a red carpet for her, but appearances aside, Aerith complains about how difficult it is to walk around in and she'll actually be much happier and comfortable in her second-best dress, which is less fancy.
• Improvised Weapon: Brings a steel chair down on one of Don Corneo's employees.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Even with all the suffering and cruelty she has already experienced from an early age and having to spend most of her formative years in the slums, Aerith remains a beacon of hope, kindness and empathy who refuses to give in to the same cynical, harsh values that define a great number of slum dwellers. She puts others before herself, a trait that is particularly highlighted in the scene where Tseng and a few Shinra grunts corner her and Marlene minutes before the Sector 7 plate's collapse. Given limited options between resisting capture and potentially saving herself from a guaranteed Fate Worse than Death versus willingly surrendering to secure Marlene's safety, she picks the latter choice without hesitation. Aerith's light-based powers and inherent goodness represent the polar opposite of Sephiroth, a being consumed by pure darkness and evil.
• Innocent Flower Girl: Subverted. While Aerith is a special girl who can grown flowers even in a place as desolated as Midgar, she only has the appearance of an innocent girl, and subverts the stereotype by being flirty, witty, and spirited, and rather hands-on for a White Magician Girl.
• Instant Runes: She can conjure a rune on the ground that will benefit allies who stand in them.
  • Arcane Ward will have any offensive spell cast inside them be cast twice for the price of one.
  • ATB Ward will have allies actively drain Aerith's ATB for their own use, letting her fuel them like a battery.
  • In Rebirth, Radiant Ward enables Aerith to fire multiple lasers at the opponent and gain invulnerability while casting spells.
• Intertwined Fingers: If Cloud takes Aerith on the second Gold Saucer date and their Relationship Values are high enough, the date concludes with them intimately Holding Hands in this manner. They also do this at the end of Rebirth, symbolizing their resolve to be together as the universe forces them to part.
• Invincibility Power-Up: Aerith's Planet's Protection Limit Break will grant the party invulnerability to physical damage for its duration.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Depending on your Relationship Values with her, if high enough she will warn Cloud in a dream sequence not to fall in love with her. From the pained way she says this, it comes across as her wanting to spare Cloud the heartbreak of her fated death. In Rebirth, an alternate timeline version of her tells Cloud not to blame himself for whatever happens to her.
• Know When to Fold Them: As much as she doesn't want Sephiroth to have the Black Materia, she knows that forcing Cloud to physically take the Black Materia from her will only serve to break his already fragile mind further and willingly relinquishes it to him.
• Lady in Red: Her most expensive dress for the Corneo mission is a cleavage-baring red number (a reimagined version of her original dress, at that), which emphasizes her sex appeal. The others are pinker are emphasize her cuteness instead.
• Last of Her Kind: Aerith is the last known surviving member of the Cetra, and it is for this reason that Shinra has a keen interest in capturing her to exploit her powers and find the Promised Land. It's also implied that her status as the last of her kind contributes to her fear of abandonment and dislike of being alone.
• Leg Focus: Whilst they’re hidden by her dress most of the time, the most extravagant dress Aerith can wear when infiltrating Don Corneo’s mansion has a long slit that prominently shows off her legs (revealing that the red pumps she wore with it in the original, as the dress is a reimagined version of her original one, have been replaced with white sandals).
• Letting Her Hair Down: She lets her hair down in a few scenes in Rebirth, to emphasize her she's letting herself be more emotionally vulnerable.
• Let's Just Be Friends: Despite spending the early-to-mid parts of the game playfully teasing and flirting with Cloud, in her resolution scene in Chapter 14 if her Relationship Values are highest, she tells that while she's beyond grateful for his friendship, he can't fall in love with her. It's hinted this is because she knows she's fated to die and is trying to spare him the guilt and heartbreak when it happens.
  • Falls away from this in Rebirth, particularly if she has the highest affection rating with Cloud. She makes it clear that she likes Cloud a lot even if he doesn't fully return her affection during their "date" in the offshoot reality (with Cloud either enthusiastically or off-handedly talking about a "next time" showing whether he's fully attracted to her or not). This change is likely due to the Whispers stripping Aerith's foresight away from her near the end of Remake, presumably as punishment for trying to change Fate. Due to this, she no longer remembers her imminent death and thus has no reason to push Cloud away.
• Living Lie Detector: When she asks Cloud about who he gave her flower to, he claims not to remember; she's very quick to catch him in the lie.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: While she keeps it tied in ribbons, her hair is still very long, which serves to emphasize her femininity.
• Long-Range Fighter: Like Barret, she specializes in doing damage from a distance, although she is much more reliant on spells.
• Loving a Shadow: Subverted. Aerith admits during her date at the Gold Saucer that she was initially attracted to Cloud because the way he walked and presented himself reminded her of Zack. But upon spending more time with Cloud, she realized that the two were nothing alike, and makes it clear that she's not just searching for the real him, but also genuinely wants to be with him as his own person, not a Zack imitation.
• Magic Is Feminine: Aerith is the group's designated mage and even has some seemingly prophetic powers on top of her ability to communicate with the Lifestream because of her Cetra heritage. The only other known Cetra is her mother Ifalna.
• Magic Staff: Aerith's weapons are staves, and this time their use is purely magical by firing magical projectiles, and they can no longer be used as striking weapons.
• Magikarp Power: In Rebirth, Aerith takes a while to pick up speed as a party member. While always a powerful mage, the fact she becomes playable before 2nd tier spells and support materia that was available around the time she was recruited in Remake that shored up her weaknesses means that she has a hard time setting up wards, and she only has Arcane Ward to begin with. Getting more powerful magic, materia to support atb bar speed and learning new wards allows her to rack up damage and stagger, dodge attacks by warping between wards, and throw out powerful attacks without using mp.
• Mana Drain: The aptly named Soul Drain ability leeches MP from enemies for Aerith to use.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: A good, well-rounded example. Cloud thinks he's immune to Aerith's cheerful nature despite himself. He's really not — it's her influence that starts to get him to defrost from the consummate and brooding mercenary he starts the game as. But Aerith also has struggles of her own and is deeply important to the story beyond serving as a positive influence on Cloud. It's also a deconstructed trope because while her manic and very enthusiastic acts do often lead to good bonding experiences with Cloud, they also leave him confused and guarded, whereas every time she sheds the act and behaves a lot truer to herself, their conversations end up being a lot more profound and lead to mutual understanding.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Aerith is another derivative of Tiferet, also spelled Tifereth or Tiphereth (the other being Tifa), representing the sixth Sefira in the Tree of Life and its symbolic association with light, love, beauty, spirituality, miracles and compassion, acting as a balance between kindness and strength. Aerith personifies these traits so well through her deeds, abilities, and relationships with the other party members (particularly Cloud), as well as her opposition to Shinra and Sephiroth, even more so after she awakens to a higher state of power at the end of Rebirth, becoming a force of good that directly opposes Sephiroth, who represents Belphegor, a demon that seduces with shortcuts to riches and is not connected to the Malkhut (an attribute not created by God but its creations). Aerith's strong spiritual connection with Cloud enables him to keep mustering the strength to defy Sephiroth's will in his critical hour of need.
  • Her name was also created to resemble and sound like the English word Earth, referencing her strong connection to the planet as well as adding contrast to the sky-based name Cloud.
• Morality Pet: To Cloud. In Remake, after soundly defeating Reno and leaving the Turk at his mercy, Cloud moves in to deliver the killing blow, but stops when Aerith begs for him to stay his hand. Throughout their adventures together in Sector 5, she also encourages him to see the value in helping others beyond monetary gain and embrace heroism more earnestly. In Rebirth, even as Cloud's mental state is being heavily corrupted by Sephiroth's will, it only takes seeing Aerith in great danger for him to fight off the brainwashing and remember what he really stands for.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: Depending on how one interprets Rebirth's ending, the death of one timeline's Aerith is just the first step in bringing an end to Sephiroth's delusions.
• Mysterious Waif: Played up much more here than the original game. She has mystical powers and an awareness of the supernatural that no normal human possesses, and she has knowledge of future events but it's unclear how or why.
• Nerves of Steel:
  • Aerith doesn't let much faze her, at least not to anyone's face. She doesn't give Hojo any sign that she is affected by his attempted Breaking Speech about her dead mother, and her response to being told that Sephiroth is an extraordinarily difficult opponent?
    Aerith: Yeah, so what? Screw him.
  • When being pursued by Cloud at the end of the Temple of the Ancients sequence, despite being visibly terrified of both Cloud and Sephiroth she keeps her senses, and is one of the only party members to try preventing Cloud from handing over the Black Materia to Sephiroth. When Aerith is forced to hand the Black Materia back over to Cloud, she responds by telling him that she's there for him in a soothing tone, remaining calm despite her obvious and understandable fear.
• Nice Girl: Aerith is a total sweetheart who doesn’t let the cynical, dangerous life in the Slums affect her cheery, idealistic disposition. Barring Tifa (who is also an Incorruptible Pure Pureness), her sense of altruism is also unmatched among the main cast, readily giving aid to others without expecting recompense (unlike Cloud) and will brave even the worst danger for those she doesn't personally know. This exceptional selflessness is shown through the act of giving up her own freedom for the sake of an innocent child when Shinra comes for her in the collapsing Sector 7. Faced with the choice of resisting capture or ensuring Marlene's safety, Aerith opts to surrender without a fight in exchange for Shinra escorting Marlene out of the danger zone, despite knowing full well that only misery, prolonged suffering and death awaits her inside Hojo's lab. Her compassionate nature also helps her see quickly through Cloud's aloof exterior, recognizing the kind yet misunderstood outcast he is deep down and spends a lot of their time together in Sector 5/Wall Market getting him to feel appreciated and in good company even when others (including Elmyra) treat him rather coldly, as well as having empathy for the ghost children of the train graveyard.
• Oh, Crap!: The Aerith who dies on the altar widens her eyes in shock after Sephiroth impales her before closing her eyes and succumbing a few seconds later.
• One of the Kids: The kids at the Leaf House adore her, and she acts friendly to all of them. She's one of the few adults that the kids let in their "secret hideout," even if it is an Open Secret among the adults.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: As nice as she may be, even Aerith can have her moments. Upon returning to Gongaga and meeting Zack's parents, she admits she gave no thought as to how they would feel about having painful memories stirred up. When the party reach Nibelheim and while chatting with Cloud, she makes comments about not having a hometown to return to; this being the same hometown of Cloud and Tifa's that was razed to the ground and their families and friends all murdered. She is, however, extremely quick to realise when she's being insensitive, and will immediately acknowledge and apologise for it.
• Opposites Attract: A complex, ultimately subverted example. Superficially this in many ways defines the dynamic Aerith has with Cloud, initially being attracted to his Zack-like traits for reminding her of her first love. Whereas Cloud is physically strong and mentally vulnerable, Aerith is physically vulnerable to antagonists like Shinra, but mentally possesses great willpower and spirituality, even if her self esteem is not the highest. Aerith is an optimistic extrovert adored by the Sector Five community, while Cloud is a cynical introvert that struggles to socialise. Aerith is openly compassionate, Cloud often has to be convinced to be altruistic. While both are lonely individuals underneath their layers and had a Friendless Background whilst growing up, this also manifests in very different ways; Aerith is overjoyed to have friends for the first time and values the party's companionship immensely, whereas Cloud secretly craves attention and validation, and became obsessed with strength and a desire to prove himself in SOLDIER, not only to get these things but also to prove to himself that he didn't need friends. All this said, Aerith's biggest attraction is to the 'real' Cloud who is an endearingly awkward yet compassionate individual at heart, rather than the differences between the two, and their strongest bonding moments occur when Aerith drops her peppy persona and admits her real feelings, in turn allowing Cloud's hidden heart of gold to shine through.
• Painfully Slow Projectile: An advantage Barret has over Aerith is that Barret's gun attacks are Hitscan, whereas the magic bolts Aerith shoots from her staff move at moderate speed and the projectiles sometimes come out in an awkward looping motion. Aerith also does an animation-intensive dance for each projectile in her combo, allowing fast-moving enemies to easily evade them (though this is mitigated by Aerith's projectiles having good seeking properties that will usually track the enemy successfully). Aerith's advantage over Barret is her attacks' much higher base damage per hit and can target up to three enemies at once, leading to her gaining ATB at an insane rate. Averted if using her Radiant Ward ability, which turns her attacks into much more powerful magical beams which travel very quickly.
• Pen Name: In Rebirth, Aerith writes her song No Promises To Keep at the Gold Saucer under the Punny Name alias "Maycomb Blume" ("Make 'em bloom). It actually takes her a second to realize they are calling her on the intercom when they use that name instead of her real name.
• Petal Power: Aerith's unique Tempest ability causes an explosion that will erupt into pink flower petals.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: She's a girl who loves dressing in pink which contrasts with the boyish Cloud and his navy blue SOLDIER uniform.
• Pink Means Feminine: She's one of the heroines of the story and has pink as a Color Motif that shows up in almost all of her outfits.
• Plain Jane: Downplayed. While Aerith is considered beautiful by a lot of characters In-Universe, she comes across as "homely" in Wall Market due to the way she dresses, with Madam M explicitly referring to her as having a "plain-Jane makeup and hairdo" and needing her help for The Makeover.
• Playing with Fire: Whenever Aerith is fighting in a cutscene she is usually casting fire. Ironic, as she starts with Blizzard.
• Power Floats: When Aerith does her most devastating ability, Ray of Judgment, she'll slowly float off the ground while doing it.
• Precision F-Strike: While climbing a ladder, Aerith says that she's "not some princess that needs to be coddled". Then the ladder starts to break with her still on it, prompting Aerith to utter "Shit!". It should be noted the original Japanese dialogue does not have a matching equivalent.
• Precursor: Aerith is the last of the Cetra, the precursor race to humanity. This gives her the power to hear the voice of the planet and a connection to The Lifestream ordinary humans lack.
• Pulling the Rug Out: Ends up pulling the rug underneath one of Don Corneo's lackeys.
• Raised in a Lab: Aerith, along with her mother Ifalna, was one of Professor Hojo's test subjects in the Shinra labs, where she spent a great part of her childhood until her mother masterminded an escape. The party even gets to visit the room where she lived when they go through Hojo's laboratory. The novel Final Fantasy VII Remake: Trace of Two Pasts goes into more detail on her life in the lab and her eventual escape.
• Red Mage: Aerith's Limit Breaks are healing and defensive but most of her abilities are oriented to boosting her damage output via magic.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Red to Tifa's Blue, with Aerith being more outgoing, wild and somewhat The Gadfly compared to her friend who is more meek and reserved.
• Renaissance Man: Like Cloud, Aerith is a multi-talented person who easily picks up and excels at a number of fields she puts her mind into. Besides being quite possibly the most powerful mage in the world, she's a knowledgeable florist, an adept herbalist, a gifted singer/songwriter, a natural dancer, and even has an uncanny aptitude for military formation marches.
• Retractable Weapon: Aerith's staves are all made of retractable materials that shrink down before she tucks them away into her clothes.
• Seers: It's strongly implied in Remake—and outright confirmed in Rebirth—that Aerith knows of the future to some degree. She knows Cloud is an ex-SOLDIER and mercenary before he tells her so, knows Tifa is about to ask her to rescue Marlene before she does so (which Tifa takes note of), isn't surprised when Cloud tells her Sephiroth might still be alive, and she has numerous lines about how one deals with fate and future events, including, possibly, her own impending death. However, in Rebirth it's revealed that the Whispers stripped this knowledge from her and Red XIII as punishment for defying them.
  Aerith: The future isn't set in stone... at least that's what I tell myself.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: The glamorous red dress has an open back.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: The dress she wears when infiltrating Don Corneo's mansion is proportionate to the amount of her sidequests completed. Completing all of them has her don a flowing long and red dress (reimagined from the one she wore for the same part of the original story), complete with a cutscene hammering home her beauty and Cloud's subsequent shock. One of Corneo's goons lampshades this when Aerith and Cloud first try to go in, leading to Aerith asking Cloud if she could kill them.
• Silk Hiding Steel: She looks like a sweet, innocent flower girl, but Aerith is just as capable of holding her own in battle as Barret, Cloud, and Tifa; she just prefers to do so using magic instead of physical strength or a firearm. Having lived a hard life in the slums from such a young age has also made her more resourceful and street smart than the average woman her age, despite the traumatizing experiences she has been through. Lampshaded by Aerith herself when she and Cloud are escaping the church.
  Aerith: I'm not some princess who needs to be coddled.
  [the ladder she's climbing snaps]
  Aerith: Shit!
• Slow Laser: Ray of Judgment, the special ability granted by Aerith's Mythril Rod, fires an energy beam from her staff.
• Spirit Advisor: A possible interpretation of Aerith's fate at the end of Rebirth is that she did die, but continues to watch over Cloud as a spirit and might play a larger role in that sense come Part 3.
• Squishy Wizard: Aerith has high Magic Attack, and many of her abilities like Soul Drain and Arcane Ward facilitate her ability to cast many spells by keeping her MP topped. In addition, she's a Long-Range Fighter, casting magical bolts from her staff. At the same time, Aerith has the lowest max HP and Defense among the party, her Magic Defense is sub-par, and her attacks are relatively weak and slow. Her evasion is also poor, compared to Tifa who can't take a hit well either, but is very good at avoiding being hit. This makes Aerith vulnerable when enemies focus on her, especially when there's a swarm of them which means she can easily be stun-locked and overcome.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • Aerith maintains a cheerful demeanor, patiently attempting to coax Cloud to open up towards her, quickly becoming good friends with Tifa, and even being on relatively good terms with some of the Turks. However, under that peppy shell is a lonely young woman troubled by her supernatural abilities, and she confesses to Cloud that the thought of leaving the security of Midgar terrifies her. She also doesn't have a very high opinion of herself at all, confessing to Cloud that she always gives up on everything. Not to mention it's heavily implied she somehow knows how the events of the original game are supposed to go, up to and including her fated death at Sephiroth's hands. Pointedly, despite both Cloud and Tifa openly voicing their discomfort in the Train Graveyard, Eligor targets her instead to prey on the greater despair she has hidden away. It is also shown in her injured quotes that being on the brink of defeat causes her to crack a bit and admit that they might not be able to win.
    Aerith: This might be it.
  • In Rebirth, at Cosmo Canyon, Aerith gives a speech about what it's been like to be an Ancient, that it's mostly been pain, everything bad that's happened to her has been because of her Cetra heritage to one degree or another, and she never gets a chance to have just a normal life. It's one of the few times she really starts opening up on just how much pain she's carried around all her life. Cloud can encourage her, which causes her to shift tones, focusing instead on all the good things that she has now.
  • At Nibelheim, she can also confess to Cloud how bothered she is at not having the childhood experiences that others take for granted, to the point of asking Cloud to give her some time alone lest she inadvertently take her feelings out on him.
  • The Temple of the Ancients sequence gives another example of her incredibly low self esteem, where she says she "screwed up" in a very defeated tone upon failing at her first attempt to calm the Lifestream storm, a new skill which she never had a chance to practice, and which literally no-one else in the world could do any better.
• Street Smart: Despite what her appearance might suggest, she's actually knowledgeable and resourceful when it comes to surviving the dangerous slums of Midgar, having been raised there since childhood. She's also well-versed at navigating the city's districts, and even guides Cloud to one of the alternate passageways that she uses to travel between Sector 6 and 7.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She looks just like her mother did when she passed away.
• Support Party Member: While she does have a ton of offensive capabilities, much of her weapon abilities and all of her Limit Breaks are focused on buffing or healing the party. Her wards even apply to other party members as well and can even be summoned on top of them.
• The Tease: An exceptionally kind case but, despite her pureness of heart, she definitely likes to gently mock Cloud for his brooding and aloof attitude.
• Teleportation: Rebirth gives her a new ability that allows her to magically teleport herself to her wards.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Plays with this trope somewhat in relation to Tifa. Aerith has a girly appearance and girly interests, but a slightly tomboyish personality. By contrast, Tifa has a slightly tomboyish appearance, but her personality is actually quite girly, and her interests are a mixture of tomboyish and girly interests.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Aerith is one of the sweetest and most compassionate characters out there in spite of how horrible and dark the world is and all the terrible experiences she went through growing up. In Rebirth, two versions of her are seemingly killed by Sephiroth. First is the one from the long-haired Chihuahua timeline who gives Cloud the empowered White Materia just before Sephiroth approaches her, and the second is the "main" timeline Aerith who dies the same way as her original 1997 counterpart did when Sephiroth distorts time to revert her fate to her intended outcome despite Cloud successfully blocking Sephiroth's blade from striking her. However, both cases are left without a clear outcome since the long-haired Chihuahua timeline's Aerith isn't actually seen getting killed, while the Beagle timeline's Aerith ends up being subjected to what appears to be a branching timeline effect that allows her to 'live' on in some form.
• True Sight: Aerith is frequently harassed by the Arbiters of Fate, dark spirits that initially only she can see, though when Cloud touches them he becomes able to see them too.
• Turn the Other Cheek: As covered in the novel, Trace of Two Pasts, Aerith experienced childhood bullying from a boy named Marcellus who claimed she "stole" his sister's name (Rona), simply because she initially went by the same name on pure coincidence to hide her Cetra identity, as per Elmyra's instructions. Despite this, she comes to Marcellus' aid when he really needs it, and never exacts revenge on him for all the torment he put her through.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Inverted. Aerith is the only member of the main group who doesn't roll to dodge. She instead does a spinning hop. This can be bad as her travel range is shorter compared to Cloud's or Tifa's, but still slightly better than Barret's.
• Verbal Backspace: When trying to convince Cloud to be her bodyguard, she says that it isn't too different from mercenary work—before quickly realizing Cloud hadn't brought up that he was a merc yet. Her attempt to cover the slip by saying she guessed based on his sword comes off as an awkward lie, though how she knew he was a merc is left unexplained. As she is later revealed to have some degree of foreknowledge of the original events of the story, this slip-up was an early hint that something strange was going on.
• Wistful Amnesia: Aerith knows the whispers have taken some knowledge from her, and when Red asks if those memories were precious, she says, "Yes. Extremely."
• You Were Trying Too Hard: A recurring theme with her relationship with Cloud is that trying to make him open up and be the real Cloud underneath his false persona oftentimes has him more puzzled about his feelings and not getting through to the real him, because she's playing the peppy Manic Pixie Dream Girl role too hard instead of simply being herself and opening up about her own vulnerabilities. Cloud opens up the most when she's honest about her own feelings so he can be honest in turn, best seen in Chapter 14's dream sequence. At first, Aerith acts even peppier than usual, to the point where it comes across as very forced and unlike her, which Cloud even points out. She then sheds the peppiness and starts talking to Cloud a lot more honestly for the rest of their time together in the dream world, leading to a bittersweet but much more profound conversation between them.

Red XIII

Voiced By: Max Mittelman (English), Kappei Yamaguchi (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs} Fabrice Fara (French), Peter Lehn (German)

"You asked what "it" is. Hmm... I am that which you see before you. Nothing more."

A creature resembling a feline/canine hybrid found in Hojo's lab, who has the ability to talk. "Red XIII" is the specimen designation he received while imprisoned and experimented on.

---

• 11th-Hour Ranger: Due to Remake only focusing on the Midgar portion of Final Fantasy VII, you only get him at the very end of the game when there are only two or three hours of playtime left. He becomes fully playable from the very start in Rebirth.
• 13 Is Unlucky: The branding of "XIII" marked his capture by Shinra, where he was fated to suffer an awful fate in Hojo's hands, which was narrowly avoided when the party crossed paths with him and rescued him.
• Absurdly Sharp Claws: His claws can cut apart fiends and war machines just as well as Barret's bullets and Cloud's BFS.
• Accent Relapse: Before revealing his true voice to the party, Red slips his voice a few times, notably that Yuffie wants to take the Massive Materia in the Weapons chest for herself nearly makes him drop it entirely. He also uses his natural voice when discussing the Whispers with Aerith at the inn, a sign of their Commonality Connection and that he trusts her. Afterwards he does the opposite, using his gravely voice for when he wants to intimidate those not in the know, or simply when he's being overly dramatic.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Rebirth delves into the trauma sustained from his captivity in Hojo's lab.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Red XIII never adopted an adversarial attitude towards Barret in the original game^note If anything, it was the other way around; at the beginning, Barret was often the one annoyed by Red. Here, he acts like a Sitcom Archnemesis to the big guy for no apparent reason. This is heavily downplayed in Rebirth, and given what we learn of him later, it may have just been an attempt to not seem weak to the most aggressive member of the team that saved him, with him being more chill after spending some time with all of them.
• Adaptational Weapon Swap: Downplayed as in both the original and the remakes, his "weapons" weren't really weapons, but in the original he had different feathers he wore on his head while in the remakes, he has different collars. This was presumably to have something to attach materia to visually on the model. In the remakes, he only has the one set of feathers on his head.
• All Animals Are Dogs: Downplayed. He has features akin to both lions and wolves but doesn't like being treated like a dog. Despite this, he wags his tail and pants like a dog whenever he's excited and happy, such as when he gets to see Bugenhagen for the first time in a long while.
• Always Save the Girl: Despite being stripped of his knowledge of the future by the Whispers, he recalls just enough to make Cloud promise to keep Aerith safe, if they spend the evening together in the Gold Saucer.
• Always Second Best: Played for Laughs in a sidequest Rebirth. When a rancher comes to the party for help, Red tries to get the scent of the problem, but he takes too much time tracking it down, so the party uses Chocobos, which doesn't sit well with Red.
• Baby Of The Bunch: Played with. Tifa along with the rest of the party are shocked to find out that Red is 48 years old, making him the chronologically oldest member of the group by a significant margin (with the exception of the later recruited Vincent, who is pushing 60 but appears half his age at most). But by the standards of his species he's basically still just a teenager of Yuffie's age, perhaps even younger. When the party first meets him Aerith even says "this child's a friend".
• Badass in Distress: In Hojo's lab, Red gets separated from Cloud and Barret, surrounded by Hojo's experiments. Tifa and Aerith have to rush over to help Red before his HP runs out.
• Belly Flop Crushing: The final blow of his Wrath of the Land Limit Break he will drop on enemies belly first, causing an eruption of earth in the process.
• Beneath the Mask: Throughout Remake and for the first half of Rebirth, Red behaves like a grizzled and taciturn figure with a sage-like voice to match. But as soon as he and the party reach his hometown, Cosmo Canyon, his voice suddenly becomes higher pitched and his demeanor changes to that of an excitable teenager as he calls out to his friends and loved ones, shattering his prior image of being an aloof old man. It is then shortly revealed that his grizzled act is just a persona he carefully cultivates in order to be taken more seriously by those who don't know him, and as a way of self-protection to hide his inner vulnerabilities to the outside world. Prior to arriving at Cosmo Canyon, he only acts like himself when alone or with Aerith.
  Red XIII: [deep voice] I appreciate all you've done for me. Thank you.
  Aerith: [wistful] We're really gonna miss you, Red.
  Red XIII: [natural voice] Aw, don't say that. You're only making this harder. I mean, I wish we had more time, but this is my duty.
  Barret: I suppose it was your "duty" to act the old man?
  Red: [deep voice] I wanted you to treat me as an equal. Not a dog.
• Berserk Button: He doesn't particularly like it when people treat him like a "pet" or refer to him as one. Red has made it clear that he wants to be seen as an equal among the party.
• Blinded by Rage: When first met in Chapter 16 of Remake he's in a feral state and almost attacks the party after failing to catch Hojo, but is restored to normal by Aerith. He also has this attitude towards Hojo, attempting to rush attack him twice as retribution for being captured and experimented on.
• Close-Range Combatant: Red is the most extreme member in this regard. His strength, speed, durability and crowd control are countered by the fact that he has to get up close and personal with his enemy. He also notably lacks options to close gaps or attack midair foes easily.
• Combat Parkour: Red XIII's Sidewinder Limit Break will have him attack enemies with a backflip for its final blow.
• The Comically Serious: When he's in his serious persona, a lot of the humor surrounding him is his ability to keep a straight face while he participates in some very cartoonish physical comedy.
• Counter-Attack: Red XIII can unleash a Counterspin attack when he guards against enemy attacks and he also has the ATB ability Sentinel Stance which will block incoming attacks and return in kind.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Red XIII is terrible at midair combat, and struggles to deal with airborne foes without using materia and ATB abilities.
• The Cynic: He tends to be more on the dour side and expects the worst of whatever's ahead. He also warns the others not to be complacent. He completely drops this in Rebirth after his true personality is revealed.
• Deadpan Snarker: When Barret complains about the truck Avalanche stole being a "piece of shit", Red XIII fires back that Barret is a "300-pound sack of it."
• Demoted to Extra: In Remake, Red XIII only joins as a Guest-Star Party Member whom the player has no control over. This is no longer the case as of Rebirth, where he becomes fully playable and an active part of the story from the beginning.
• Developer's Foresight: He has two sets of recorded lines for every sidequest in the game that he takes part in pre-Cosmo Canyon depending on whether he's still using his grizzled deep-voiced persona or his true teenage self. It even goes as far as other party members referring to him as either "Red" or "Nanaki".
• Disappeared Dad: Red believes that his father Seto abandoned Cosmo Canyon when the Gi Tribe attacked. In reality, Seto died fighting the Gi who were entering through the Cave of the Gi until the cave could be sealed.
• Endearingly Dorky: Despite the serious facade he displays outwardly, he can be rather goofy from time to time. The first major example being when, after getting extremely offended that he isn't allowed in the Queen's Blood tournament on the cruise ship due to not being human, he dresses up as a Shinra soldier to hide his identity and proceeds to make a surprise appearance at the end of the tournament as a mysterious challenger and dances like Michael Jackson to "sell" the illusion of him being a human rather than a canine/feline thing. And once he discards the gruff serious persona upon reaching Cosmo Canyon, he just straight up acts like a young teenager for the rest of the story.
• Expressive Ears: They are particularly notable during the ending of the Cave of the Gi sequence in Cosmo Canyon.
• Face of a Thug: Exploited for all its benefits. Red is well aware that he has a grizzled and mean-looking mug, so he pretends to be a terse, no-nonsense badass to seem older and more intimidating than he actually is. His real personality is that of a fun-loving and excitable teenager, much like his real age.
• Fiery Lion: Downplayed. The tip of his tail is literally made of flame instead of a tuft of fur. Besides that, however, the rest of him is normal.
• Flaming Hair: The tip of Red XIII's tail is constantly alight with a flame.
• Friend to All Children: Whenever the party separates when in town, he'll often be surrounded by children, whom he tolerates good naturedly.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In Rebirth, despite the party exclusively referring to him with his real name, Nanaki, after the events at Cosmo Canyon as well as every sidequest featuring him having alternate dialogue to reflect said change, he is still only ever referred to as Red XIII in subtitles and in-game menus for the entirety of the game.
• Gathering Steam: His playstyle evokes this a bit. He has his normal combat state, but can build up a gauge called "Vengeance" by blocking enemy attacks. After charging this gauge, he can activate it to enter Vengeance mode where all of his attacks are buffed in a variety of ways and he can regain health through his attacks.
• Guest-Star Party Member: He joins the party near the end of the story in Remake, but can't be directly controlled. Instead, Red attacks and moves on his own, complete with his own fighting style, healing magic, and Limit Breaks. All of his actions are independent of the player's input. This doesn't apply as of Rebirth, which makes him a fully functional party member.
• Handicapped Badass: He's missing an eye, but that doesn't seem to impede his depth perception, general movement, and combat prowess in any way.
• Hates Being Touched: Downplayed. It's more accurate to say he's extremely careful of who he allows to touch and pet him, and even then he's tense and guarded. Touching his paw pads, on the other hand, is completely and utterly out of the question. No matter how much Aerith pokes, prods and begs to touch them, he refuses to budge on this. Even the offer of a foot massage from her doesn't work. Red's willingness to let Cloud pet him speaks volumes about how much Red trusts him should they ride the skywheel together.
• Heroic Build: Animal example. He has very pronounced musculature, befitting his stern yet noble warrior outlook.
• Hidden Depths: Who would've thought that this quadrupedal fella happens to be very skilled at dancing on two legs? While disguised as a Shinra trooper, Red takes full advantage of the flamboyant nature of dance to maintain the illusion that he's bipedal as he struts, spins, and moonwalks his way through a crowd of spectators to challenge Cloud to a card battle. He also proves surprisingly adept at Queen's Blood by using his warrior training to memorize and counter the strategies of other players.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: At first, he puts up an aloof and wizened front that comes across as dour, cynical, and world-weary. But once he arrives home to Cosmo Canyon, Red drops the stoicism and acts like an outgoing, excitable teenager. He explains that he lowers his voice and acts aloof while trying to be taken seriously rather than being treated like a dog. His reluctance to part ways with them shows how attached he's become despite his previous attitude.
• I Owe You My Life: In Kalm, he privately thanks Cloud for saving him from Hojo's laboratory and informs him he'll accompany and assist the party "until his debt is paid".
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Discussed. When the heroes first meet him, they ask "What is it?" Red remarks that's an interesting question to ask.
• Jack of All Stats: This is Red his base state — he's not as strong as Cloud, as swift as Tifa, as tough as Barret or as magically-inclined as Aerith, but has a decent spread in all four categories with the potential to become a full-out Lightning Bruiser when his Vengeance Mode is activated. His unique abilities also include a full spread of physical and magical attacks, plus buffs and healing. As a party member, his weaknesses have less to do with his stats and more with his lack of aerial options and his high ATB usage, plus the fact that he needs to take hits in order to release Vengeance Mode and fight to his full potential.
• Kid Hero: As much as he hides it, he's actually a fairly young teenager by his species' standards, and his normal voice shows it.
• Known Only by Their Nickname: Red XIII is the designation Hojo gave him. Tifa asks what his real name is, but the conversation is interrupted and never revisited in Remake. His real name "Nanaki" is eventually revealed to the party in Rebirth, and they will actually start to address him as such, even in sidequest content in previous regions. That said, he's still referred to as Red XIII in the game's menus post reveal.
• Like Brother and Sister: With Aerith in Rebirth. Out of the rest of the party, he feels the most comfortable in confiding with and letting his guard down around her prior to reaching Cosmo Canyon, and if Cloud goes on the Gold Saucer date with Red XIII, he will even ask Cloud to protect Aerith from danger.
• Life Drain: His Siphon Strike and Blood Fang abilities will drain life from in the enemy while doing damage.
• Lightning Bruiser: Red is the fastest among the party members and has the quickest dodge and actually gains more power through tanking through enemy attacks.
• Lunacy: Howling Moon will conjure an image of the moon which will shatter damaging enemies and enhance Red's Super Mode.
• Magical Accessory: He equips collars rather than headdresses this time, but they don't really get used as a weapon either and function as a Stat Stick.
• The Medic: When he is helping the party in Rebirth, he can use Cure on allies with low health, and heals Cloud at various points during the motorcycle chase section.
• Missing Mom: His mother perished while fighting the Gi Tribe.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Red XIII's species shares traits with both lions and wolves.
• Mr. Exposition:
  • He is the one who explains to the party what the Whispers are, having been somehow imbued with cosmic knowledge when Aerith touched him. He also identifies Jenova as the Calamity from the Skies, at a point when Shinra still believe her to be a Cetra. As Aerith had knowledge of the original Compilation at the time, and she herself recognises Jenova, whatever she did to calm Red also gave him some of that foreknowledge.
  • He gives a lot of exposition about the old Republic of Junon during the early game in Rebirth.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Played for Laughs in Gongaga. One of his side-quests is to help a kindly chicken rancher grandmother get back her wayward chickens. The last of which is so scared by her close encounter with a fiend that she tells Red that she is going to appreciate her life at the ranch now that she has seen how scary the outside world is. Immediately after reporting their success, said chicken is grilled and fed to Cloud and Red, with Red musing that if not for him the chicken would have lived a longer life.
• Mythology Gag: When Tifa notices his "XIII" tattoo and just before Red announces himself, he pauses while posed◊ identical to his original concept art◊.
• Natural Weapon: Being a beast, he mostly attacks with his fangs and claws rather than his equipped "weapon" which is merely a Stat Stick.
• The Nose Knows: He is noted for his keen sense of smell and a few different sidequests involve making use of this to track down objectives. He states that it is seven thousand times better than that of a human's and that a single sniff of a person's clothing is enough for him to locate them.
• Not So Above It All:
  • He likes to give the impression of an old, wise and knowledgeable man but also seems unable to resist snarking at others' expense, particularly Barret's. Makes sense, as he's actually a teenager by the standards of his species, and is merely sounding more mature than he really is.
  • He tries to sign up for the Queen's Blood tournament aboard the Shinra-8, and is angry with the clerk when they reject him because only humans are permitted to play. Red then resorts to dressing up like a Shinra trooper and walking on his hind legs so he can pass as human and challenge Cloud, and he even spins and moonwalks to prove that pretending to be bipedal isn't so difficult. In the late game when the party pays their second visit to the Gold Saucer and split off to visit the attractions, Red can be found at the Queen's Blood arena in the Wonder Square ready to play Cloud again, this time without a disguise.
  • He's noticeably flustered when Aerith and Tifa ask for his opinion on their beachwear, so much so that he momentarily slips into his natural voice. He then gives them very awkwardly worded Purple Prose compliments to try and recover, and when the girls are confused, he claims that human standards of beauty are difficult for him to judge.
  • He's not above mooching food off of people like a pet would. He actually identifies his appetite as his Fatal Flaw; he loses focus very easily if he notices food. He's also often seen to draw awe from children whenever the party visits a new town and splits up to see the sights, and while he claims to the party that it annoys him, it's more subtly implied that he likes the attention.
  • When the group arrives at the Gold Saucer, they put to vote who wants to have fun in the park. Aerith, Tifa, and Yuffie are ecstatic to say yes, while Red hesitates before sheepishly saying yes as well. He wastes no time in joining them, however.
• Out of Focus: In Remake, he is only introduced in the last minutes of the third-to-last chapter and has no time to develop his motivations or personality beyond "escape Hojo's lab", "wrong place wrong time", and "picks on Barret". Fortunately, the finale of the game is expanded so that he at least has time to trust and bond with the team enough that he feels like a part of the crew by the time the game is over.
• Professional Voice Dissonance: Red invokes a wise-sounding grizzled voice to match his grizzled appearance, until it's revealed in Rebirth that he's just putting on an act to seem older and dignified. His true, natural speaking voice sounds just like an average male human teenager's, because he is a teenager according to his species' lifespan. Barret has a Double Take over hearing Red switch into his natural voice upon entering Cosmo Canyon for the first time, more than likely echoing the player's reaction. Post-reveal, he still occasionally switches back to his "old man" voice whenever he tries to be more dramatic or threatening.
• Promoted to Playable: As of Rebirth, he is a fully playable member of the party from the start, complete with his own unique play style like the other heroes.
• Red Is Heroic: Has red fur, is actually named Red and is one of the main heroes of the story.
• Rolling Attack: His Sidewinder attack has him somersault flipping onto the enemy with a lash of his tail.
• Seers: Of a sort. Aerith—who possessed knowledge of the future—accidentally imbued Red XIII with that knowledge as well while calming him down. However, in Rebirth it's revealed that the Whispers stripped this knowledge from Aerith and Red XIII as punishment for defying them.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: He and Barret seem to have a downplayed, mostly one-sided version of this. Red usually responds to Barret's obnoxious behavior with annoyed sarcasm or deadpan insults, with Barret being unable to land a witty comeback.
• Situational Damage Attack: Crescent Claw dramatically increases in range and power if executed while in Vengeance Mode, but it will consume the meter in the process.
• Spin Attack: In his playable form, Red incorporates spinning maneuvers as part of his combo attacks, rapidly hitting enemies with his flaming tail by spinning rear-first towards them.
• Star Power: He uses his Stardust Ray Limit Break combined with Barret's Fire In the Hole to damage the titanic penultimate boss. In Rebirth, Stardust Ray is made into a command ability which will suction enemies in and deal heavy magical damage.
• Stat Stick: His collar "weapons" only exist for him to slot his materia into, because in actual combat, he uses his claws, fangs and magic as his weapons.
• Super Mode: Red's Unique Skill allows him to build up a Vengeance gauge by blocking attacks. Once activated, it increases his attack power and dodge speed and allows him to use Siphon Fang until the gauge is depleted.
• Team Pet: Played with. Being the four-legged Token Non-Human member of the party has many people assuming that he's the group's pet. However, Red has made it very clear that he is nobody's "pet," and treating him as such is one of his biggest Berserk Button. He has made it clear multiple times that he wants to be seen as an equal among the party. Hilariously though, the story like to throw in a couple Furry Reminder where he acts like a loyal dog, especially towards Cloud and Aerith.
• Tail Slap: Many of his attacks are to tail whip enemies with his flaming tail, usually by spinning wildly.
• Talking Animal: Of the Civilized Animal type. He walks on all fours, but is perfectly capable of human speech. He's also quite eloquent and snarky when he wants to be, suggesting at least human-level intelligence.
• Token Non-Human: He's the only other team member besides Cait Sith who isn't some kind of humanoid, being a sentient four-legged animal instead.
• The Unsmile: After your party breaks from the Shinra building, Barret is relieved that they're home free, but Red XIII tells him that he wouldn't celebrate just yet as Shinra is still on their tail. Barret suggests that Red might want to try smiling a little since he's always so dead serious. And so he does. The end result looks so unnerving that Barret immediately retracts the suggestion, concluding that Red's better off with his usual frown. Red is not amused.
• Wall Run: Cloud can have Red run over chain-link walls to reach switches in Hojo's lab. Also, when attempting to confront Hojo, Red does a few Wall Jumps up a vertical shaft. This is his unique traversal skill in Rebirth, allowing him to reach areas that cannot be gotten to by humans.
• Wolverine Claws: Red's main method of attacking is the long sharp claws on his paws, but he is also amendable to body slams, tail whips and bites.
• You Are Number 6: Red XIII isn't his real name, it's just the label Hojo assigned to what the scientist regarded as another one of his specimens.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!:
  • He is incredulous when, right after he just explained that the Weapons are essential to protecting the planet, Yuffie suggests catching one so she can pry its materia off.
  • He gets shocked when Cissnei reveals that she can see the Whispers, too.
• Younger Than They Look: Between his grizzled appearance and his use of a gruff "old man" voice, none of the heroes guessed that Red is just a teenager by the standards of his species until Red lets his natural voice slip.

Yuffie Kisaragi

Voiced By: Suzie Yeung (English), Yumi Kakazu (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs} Caroline Combes (French), Eleni Möller-Architektonidou (German)
Young Yuffie Voiced By: Brandilyn Cheah (English), Kino Sakai (Japanese)

^{In Disguise}

"The Amazing Yuffie wants you! Join her team and the sky's the limit!"

A young ninja/materia hunter/elite special forces operative from Wutai.

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• Action Girl: For such a young girl, Yuffie is skilled in ninjutsu and fights with a giant shuriken, throwing at and slashing her opponents with rapid ferocity.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Sonon sacrifices himself to save her from Nero's attack and allow her to escape. Seeing her friend mortally wounded traumatizes Yuffie; she openly weeps as she runs out of Shinra headquarters. Right as soon as she runs out, she also witnesses the plates falling on Sector 7 and screams in despair over the hundreds or thousands of lives lost.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: A very downplayed example, her original appearance had oversized clothes and a face that made her look younger than she was. Here she has appropriate clothes and appearance more suited to her age, so she comes off looking less like a Tagalong Kid and more like a teenager.
• Adaptational Badass: Like the other party members of the original game, Yuffie gets a major power boost this time around. Her abilities in her DLC episode are enough to outshine that of the entire party, and the biggest example was how while Nero easily defeated her in Dirge of Cerberus, this time, albeit with help from Sonon, she is able to not only force him to remove his limiters but even damages him enough that he admits her and Sonon as being Worthy Opponents. Nero even had to go out of his way to fake being beaten in order to kill Sonon and force her to escape in the end.
• Adaptational Curves: While still very thin, Yuffie has a more athletic, gymnast physique compared to her rather skinny appearance in the original game.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: In the original game, she first appears as a Random Encounter after the party leaves Midgar. Here, her DLC episode has her enter the story sometime after the events at Mako Reactor 5. Notable in that this is directly influenced by the country of Wutai being reimagined as an active force of resistance in Remake instead of the conquered, defanged and powerless state it was in the original game, which gives Yuffie sufficient reason to be more proactive.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: While she still possesses an obnoxious and bratty side, she isn't nearly as self-centered and underhanded as she was in the original game, which in Rebirth is primarily Kyrie's characterization.
  • In the original game, after Barret revealed what happened to Corel, she gave him No Sympathy for trusting Shinra in the first place. Here, she actually empathizes with him since she has a grudge against Scarlet herself.
• Adaptational Skimpiness: A downplayed example. Her original outfit had oversized sweater and shorts to convey her childishness but here they are properly sized, making her exposed stomach and legs more noticeable. In Rebirth she dials this back with a belt, covering up her stomach a bit.
• Adaptation Deviation:
  • In the original Final Fantasy VII, she met the party in a random forest as a Random Encounter, and fought them to try and steal their materia. In Rebirth, she first meets the party after they rescue her from the Terror of the Deep (formerly named Bottomswell) in Under Junon.
  • This also extends her initial motivations for joining the party. In the original game, she only joins with the intention of eventually swiping all of the party's materia. This time, her hearing about the party's exploits in blowing up reactors in Midgar immediately endears her to want to join up with Barret's sect of Avalanche, believing that they share her desire to bring down Shinra through any means necessary.
• Adaptation Expansion: In the original Final Fantasy VII, Yuffie was largely inconsequential to the story, owing to her status as an optional character you had to go out of your way to locate and recruit. She becomes the playable protagonist of Episode INTERmission, which expands on her traits and gives her a motive for wanting to seek out Cloud's group to join them later. In Rebirth she becomes a core part of the plot, in the Junon segment of taking Priscilla's place as the girl that needs to be rescued, and trying to assassinate Rufus.
• Airplane Arms: Yuffie stretches out her arms when she runs. It helps sell that she is younger than the others and that she's a ninja.
• All for Nothing: In the end, the only thing that came out of Yuffie's mission in Midgar is the death of Sonon. The ultimate materia was unfinished and she wasn't able to return to Sector 7 before the plate falls. All she can do is flee while tearing up.
• Anywhere but Their Lips: If Cloud takes Yuffie on the second Gold Saucer date and their Relationship Values are high enough, Yuffie will give Cloud a peck on the cheek after more or less admitting that she's developed a Precocious Crush on him.
• Ascended Extra: In the sense that in the original game, she was merely an Optional Party Member that can be recruited, but not required to do so. Here in Rebirth her joining the party is officially part of the plot.
• Assist Character: In Rebirth, she gains a new "Doppelgänger" ability which allows her to summon a puppet clone of herself which assists her during battle.
• The Baby of the Bunch: She is the youngest member of her group and gets treated as such, much to her annoyance. Yuffie tells Sonon not to treat her like she's his little sister, since he does see her like his own sister.
• Badass Adorable: Being a descendant of a shinobi clan, Yuffie is an excitably adorable teenaged girl while also being a skilled and agile fighter. Her Moogle costume only adds to this.
• Badass in Distress: While she's a capable Ninja, the party has to rescue her in Rebirth when she's ambushed by the Terror of the Deep in Junon's port.
• Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Though she's more tomboyish than most examples, Yuffie is an attractive girl with a cute and energetic personality whose figure is complemented by her belly-exposing attire.
• Battle Boomerang: One of her weapons is a large boomerang in place of a shuriken.
• Berserk Button: Almost nothing makes Yuffie angrier than being on the receiving end of Just a Kid and Not Now, Kiddo remarks, with her insisting that she is very much an adult.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Yuffie is something of an Idiot Hero but she is also a highly trained ninja with all the powers that entails.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: Yuffie has a unique block mechanic that renders her fully invincible if she blocks an attack with precision timing. In Rebirth, this becomes a standard mechanic for all characters.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: When Sonon protects Yuffie from getting shanked by Nero's counter-attack, the fatality of his sacrifice is made apparent by him coughing blood into her face.
• Blow You Away: Yuffie can cast her unique Windstorm ninjutsu which will pull enemies to her to cluster them together. She can also aspect her ninjutsu basic attack to Wind.
• Break the Cutie: Yuffie's time in Midgar ends on a tragic and traumatic note, one that no 16-year-old should have to deal with. Downplayed, however, in that while the event leaves her shaken and emotionally scarred, she vows to press on and seems to retain her optimistic outlook at the conclusion of Intergrade.
• Character Tics: Yuffie has a habit of shadow boxing while quietly kiai-ing when she's embarrassed or being playful.
  Yuffie: Sih, sih, hah!
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Yuffie has superhuman strength and abilities that are attributed to her ninja training. She's strong enough to smash Shinra mechs, fast enough to parry gunfire, bite through Da-chao beans, and that's not even getting into her ninjutsu.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: Despite her age, Sonon is perfectly willing to follow Yuffie's lead (to the point of calling her "boss"), due to her greater experience.
• Composite Character: Downplayed, as Priscilla is still in the game, but Yuffie takes over as the girl needing to be rescued from a monster under Junon, rather than Priscilla, who is just Yuffie's friend. She's also the architect behind the plan to get to topside Junon, which was Priscilla's idea in the original.
• Covert Pervert:
  • In Intergrade, Yuffie giggles and practically drools when three of Don Corneo's lackies are spouting lame pickup lines... only to be indignant when she realizes they were directed at Nayo rather than her. When the three thugs dismiss her as just being a kid, she helps Sonon beat them to a pulp and retorts that she is an adult and "hot stuff" herself.
  • In Rebirth, when Dio shows up to the Gold Saucer, joins in the Dance-Off, and whips off his muscle shirt to reveal his bodybuilder physique, Yuffie is too distracted to keep dancing, covers her face with her hands... and immediately peeks through her fingers. When he starts flexing, she outright swoons.
  • When Tifa and Cloud have a heart-to-heart conversation after the Gongaga reactor incident in Rebirth, Yuffie eavesdrops at the door—with Cait Sith standing on her shoulders—in case anything juicy happens. Tifa hears Yuffie giggling and pranks them by suddenly opening the door, causing the ninja and robot cat to unceremoniously faceplant.
• A Day in the Limelight: She gets her own special episode in Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade.
• Chuunibyou: When Yuffie was younger, she convinced herself she could use Ki Manipulation and would go around trying to blast people—the origin of her character tic.
• Commonality Connection: While she and Barret get off on the wrong foot, they eventually bond over their similar personalities and struggles, as they both have a huge grudge against Shinra (and Scarlet in particular) due to their homes being devastated by the company, which gave both revolutionary tendencies and willingness to do morally questionable actions in order to bring their enemies down. At the end of the Corel arc in Rebirth, they even make a promise to bring down Scarlet together one day.
• Decomposite Character: Yuffie's Remake portrayal largely does away with her more abrasive and unscrupulous traits in favor of putting more emphasis on her freedom-fighting exploits and strong sense of patriotism. The old Yuffie's tendency towards rudeness, selfishness, deception, and opportunistic thievery have been given to Kyrie Canaan instead. Rebirth brings back the rudeness and selfishness as it goes along and it becomes clear that Yuffie's goals are only partially aligned with the rest of the party's, though her worst traits from the original are still given to Kyrie.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Kid Hero. Yuffie is extremely skilled despite only being 16 and is able to hold her own in battle just fine alongside Sonon, and she's rather intelligent and capable otherwise. However, her age still means she has a wide immaturity streak, doesn't really understand how the world works (especially in Midgar, where she's a fish out of water), she's very impulsive and emotional, and she's nowhere near as clever as she thinks she is. The result is that while her physical capabilities are impressive, she makes poor decisions and is easily tricked and outsmarted by her enemies. It takes a lot of support from Avalanche for her to get inside the Shinra building, she and Sonon are noticed almost immediately and things quickly go south from there, and it's only with Sonon's help that she's able to make it out alive. If she had been left on her own, Yuffie likely would have gotten herself captured within hours of arriving at Midgar purely because of her immaturity and inexperience. This is further deconstructed come Rebirth, as her impulsive attempt to assassinate Rufus Shinra during the negotiation leads to failure and it causes the deal to be called off, resulting in Shinra attempting to capture Cloud and company again. Her need for action means that she doesn't see that Wutai is playing into Shinra and Sephiroth's hands as the country goes to war later in the game.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: She sings and hums her character theme on occasion. She also hums the victory theme after fights sometimes, much like Barret does.
• Downloadable Content: She was only playable if her episode INTERmission was purchased. She's fully playable in Rebirth.
• Eagle Squadron: She claims to be assisting AVALANCHE on behalf of the new Wutai government ("provisional government" in Japanese).
• Easily Forgiven: Yuffie ruins Rufus Shinra's offer of a pardon for Cloud's team by attempting to assassinate him just as Cloud accepts... though nobody holds it against her since—as Barret later says—Shinra isn't to be trusted and making a deal with them was bound to backfire at some point.
• Elemental Powers: She can change the element of her ninjutsu attacks to Fire, Ice, Lightning and Wind as well as the element of her Banishment ninjutsu in the same manner.
• Everyone Has Standards: Yuffie's personality makes her obtuse, impulsive, and annoying at times. That said, even she is appalled when she finally meets up with Kyrie and sees what a shameless opportunist the latter is.
  Yuffie: Man, this girl's got some nerve. And comin' from me, that's sayin' a lot.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: Perhaps due to her culture, but she is completely confused when the rest of the party prays at a memorial to the dead and later states that she thinks that Planetology is BS, that there's no souls or returning to the planet. This is despite being in a group with the last person on the planet capable of speaking to the planet or that another member of the party had just taken a short trip to the Lifestream like 24 hours earlier.
• Fuma Shuriken: As always, Yuffie's main weapon is her 4-Point Shuriken, a giant ninja star that she can use in both melee and as a throwing weapon.
• Funny Foreigner: Done in reverse. She judges non-Wutaians over the fact they can't bite through her favorite Da-chao beans, which she and Sonon can bite through without problems.
• Fragile Speedster: Yuffie's elemental ninjutsus allow her to rapidly build up stagger gauges and shred through health bars, but she can't take all that many direct hits in a fight. Thankfully, she makes up for this by being able to negate damage if she blocks just before an attack hits.
• The Gadfly: Mischievous ninja that she is, some ambient dialogue has her teasing the others solely to amuse herself—such as needling Cloud by suggesting they clone an army of Tifas and then gleefully accusing him of being a pervert.
• Gamer Chick: If not accompanying Cloud, Yuffie can be found in Wonderment Square at the Gold Saucer, and challenged at the 3D brawler minigame on the second visit. If she is accompanying him, when first entering the area, she's overjoyed.
  Yuffie: I've died and gone to gaming heaven!
• Genki Girl: Being the youngest of the party, Yuffie is brimming with energy and rarely ever dials it down unless she's bored.
• Hammerspace: Yuffie overshadows Aerith by being able to pull her huge throwing star from out of nowhere even when not using her Moogle cloak, and unlike Aerith's staff, it can't retract either!
• Hand Seals: The initial animation for her ninjutsu attack has her perform a mudra.
• Hates Their Parent: She has a rather low opinion of her father, to the point of openly saying that she supports his arrest.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: A self-proclaimed ninja and spy who sneaks into Midgard "disguised" in a bright white Moogle poncho, midriff-bearing green turtleneck, and short-shorts that make her completely stand out from the more normally dressed people in the Sector 7 slums. Not helping is her constantly shouting about how badass she thinks her Ninja skills are.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Yuffie has little regard for her father and the members of the previous government who agreed to the ceasefire with Shinra to end the war, feeling outraged that they would accept peace after everything they suffered. Because of that, she fully supports Glenn Lodbrok's coup d'état and her father's arrest, to the point of being a Hero-Worshipper for the colonel. However, it is revealed at the end of Rebirth that Lodbrok is a Sephiroth clone and his real intention is for Shinra and Wutai to kill each other in a new war, as this is in the villain's best interests, making Yuffie an Unwitting Pawn.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Has this dynamic with her " INTERmission" partner Sonon, who is quite built and a whole head taller than Yuffie, a skinnier, younger girl. It turns out to work very well for them in combat as they utilize each other's body types to their advantage.
• Hypocritical Humor: When Gilgamesh accuses Avalanche of being thieves, Yuffie—who is obsessed with getting as many materia as she can by any means necessary—gets indignant.
• Incoming Ham:
  • When confronting the Shinra troopers who've captured Zhijie, she introduces herself in a most over-the-top, grandiose manner complete with theatrical effects.
  • When she introduces herself to the heroes at the end of Chapter 6 of Rebirth, she also uses an over-the-top manner to do so, describing herself in flowery terms and posing dramatically. Once she's done, Cloud just says a stoic "Cool" and walks away, making this a Failed Attempt at Drama.
• Innocent Innuendo: She exclaims she can "do adult stuff just fine" when she hears Sonon has been hanging around Wall Market, assuming that refers to drinking alcohol. Sonon is nonplussed and quickly decides to change the subject.
• Instant Runes: Yuffie's ninjutsu conjure magical runes with Japanese characters on them.
• Interquel: Her story takes place during Avalanche's attack on Reactor 5. From the trailer, she observes Avalanche's behaviour from a distance before going off on her own missions while the Sector 6 story occurs. Her mission is supposedly to steal a rare materia from within Shinra HQ, putting her in there in shortly after the Reactor 5 bombing mission. The ending of her mission has her witness Shinra's destruction of Sector 7, causing her to collapse to her knees and scream in horror.
• Jack of All Stats: As the sole player character of her episode, Yuffie is balanced to be quickly adaptable at any range and with both weaponry and materia. This carries over to Rebirth where she is the first character other then Cloud and then Cait Sith who can attack with both close range physical attacks and long ranged magic ones without using any materia.
• Just a Kid: It's a Running Gag that Yuffie wants to be treated seriously as an adult, but her immature antics have several people (enemies and foes alike) dismiss her as "just being a kid".
• Large Ham: One of her victory quotes is incredibly over the top, to put it mildly.
  Yuffie: None can escape THE WRATH OF THE NINJA!
  Sonon: You wanna overreact a little more?
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • At the beginning of the INTERmission DLC, the first thing Yuffie says is "Well guys, your girl finally made it to Midgar," almost like she's addressing the fans who have been waiting for her debut in Remake.
  • The end of INTERmission shows Yuffie admitting to herself that she needs more comrades to rely on if she's to stand a chance against Shinra. Pointing at the sky, she then yells, "The amazing Yuffie wants you! Join her team and the sky's the limit!" just as the camera pans in front of her face, thus directly addressing you, the player.
  • In Rebirth, similar to Prompto from XV, she'll occasionally sing a song to the tune of the Chocobo theme. She'll occasionally also hum the victory theme after fights.
• Leeroy Jenkins: It is common for Yuffie to act on impulse without any consideration for the danger she will face. Although this trait makes her brave, it also makes her reckless and clumsy, to the point that Sonon warns her to be more careful:
  Sonon: You gotta learn to think before ya act, Boss. Gonna get yourself killed one of these days.
• Locked Out of the Loop: For most of Rebirth until she actually joins the party, she's unaware of Sephiroth and the party's pursuit of him and the robed men. She's suitably freaked out when they merge into Jenova.
• Lovable Rogue: Yuffie is one of the main heroines and is a shifty Ninja, thief and materia hunter with a loose moral code and an adventurous, daring personality that suits her line of work.
• Made of Iron: Throughout Episode INTERmission Yuffie takes a lot of very painful looking falls.
  • While distracting some Shinra she slips from 2 stories up and lands on her back but is able to to shrug it off and fight without any penalty or health lost.
  • During the boss fight against Nero, Yuffie is thrown straight through what appears to be reinforced glass.
• Mage Marksman: Yuffie can fight at close or long range with her shuriken, but when fighting from long range she can continue to attack with ninjutsu while her shuriken is still airborne.
• Marionette Master: In Rebirth, Yuffie gains a skill called "Doppelgänger" that allows her to summon a puppet clone of herself which attacks on command. Her synergy ability with Aerith amps it up by summoning two puppets that strike simultaneously.
• Moment Killer: In Rebirth, she and Cait Sith spy on Cloud and Tifa having an intimate conversation where Tifa leans closer like she's about to go for a kiss, but it gets ruined when their voices are heard through the door.
• Motor Mouth: Downplayed. Yuffie doesn't talk all that fast, but she tends to talk a lot, especially when she's fired up about a subject.
• Mundane Object Amazement: She is completely fascinated by a hologram. Scarlet mocks her as a hick for being impressed by something so common.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Much of the tension between Yuffie and the rest of the party in Rebirth stems from her being out for revenge against Shinra for the wrongs they did to her home country, rather than for the sake of saving the Planet. She doesn't believe in the Lifestream at all, in fact, and this leads her to become far more of a jerk during the Cosmo Canyon arc than she is beforehand, as it becomes clear that Yuffie's interests don't align with the rest of the team's.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Rebirth, Yuffie impulsively attempts to assassinate Rufus Shinra in Junon just as he gives Cloud's team a pardon in exchange for killing Sephiroth. Assuming Cloud and co. to be responsible, Rufus promptly rescinds the pardon and orders his men to hunt down and kill Cloud's group once again.
• Ninja Brat: While Yuffie is considered a fully fledged member of Wutai's ninja forces, she is otherwise a teenager who often has an overinflated opinion of her skills. It is also shown that while her training is complete, her actual ability to use her skills still has some refining in her DLC, and she has no idea the damage actual warfare exacts when the possibility of Shinra and Wutai reigniting their conflict rears up.
• Not Helping Your Case: Although Yuffie hates being dismissed as Just a Kid by others, the young ninja is often impulsive and naive, which does not help to dispel the impression that she is immature despite her insistence to the contrary.
• Oh, Crap!: It turns out that recklessly challenging a former SOLDIER to a duel is not that great an idea, because all Cloud has to do is place his hand on his sword's grip and take a step forward to make Yuffie very nervous.
• Pervert Revenge Mode: When Yuffie regains consciousness to find Cloud crouched over her with his hands above her chest—having been about to help Mayor Rhonda give her CPR—she assumes he was about to molest her and almost attacks him before Rhonda intercedes and explains what was going on.
• Phrase Catcher: Characters seeing her for the first time often dismiss her as Just a Kid.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Upon arriving in the Gold Saucer, Yuffie is magically outfitted with a fancy green kimono and joins in a Dance-Off, looping Aerith and Tifa into it as well.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: All of her weapons, which includes a stylized boomerang, will always make their way back to Yuffie after she tosses them out.
• Precocious Crush:
  • She teasingly flirts with Cloud in Costa del Sol and becomes flustered if he sarcastically affirms her statement that he's attracted to her. If she ends up chosen for the Gold Saucer date scene, Yuffie teasingly affirms Aerith's bemused inquiry as to whether she and Cloud are on a date (to Cloud's annoyance) and when examining Jessie's portrait she poses coyly and gestures at herself when quipping that Cloud seems destined to find himself surrounded by "smokin' hot babes", and closes her eyes in anticipation of kissing Cloud while cast in the role of Princess Rosa. During the Skywheel ride—which she frames as practice for when she finds the right guy—she has to work up the courage to ask Cloud about the nature of his relationship with Tifa, tells Cloud that he reminds her of a SOLDIER she had a crush on when she was a kid, and then kisses him on the cheek before getting flustered, trying to pass it off as "practice", and threatening to kill him if he tells anyone.
  • The SOLDIER in question is none other than Zack Fair, and the events described seemingly add to the reason she was following him around in Crisis Core (at least in Remake). Where before, she was only out to try and steal treasure to aid Wutai's recovery, now she claims she started to develop a crush on him because he would humor her when she pretended to punch him.
• Prone to Vomiting: She suffers from a seriously bad case of motion sickness. She barely makes it through the train ride to Shinra HQ, and very nearly pops in the party's buggy in Rebirth. If Cloud chooses Barret's "favored route" for the cart in the Corel mines, she will be screaming her head off, then stumbling and gagging the whole time while wishing a painful death for Cloud. Sonon is more amused than annoyed by this as his sister also had motion sickness.
• Proud Beauty: She thinks highly of her appearance, even describing herself as "hot stuff". But most characters don't agree and often treat her as Just a Kid. In Rebirth, she's noticeably envious when Aerith and Tifa turn heads with their swimsuits while other people ignore her.
• Purposefully Overpowered: Played with. Yuffie is skilled at fighting both in melee and from range, can utilize both magic and physical attacks, can use her Ninjutsu to grant her magical attacks elemental properties. This gives her a far more diverse skillset than any of the characters in the base game, and she's the only one able to use elemental magic without materia or consuming MP. She also begins her DLC with an armor piece that gives double materia growth, and can find an armor that protects against fatal attacks once per battle and a Ribbon accessory which blocks all status ailments and makes her magic harder to be interrupted, all equipment that isn't available to the party in the base game and is quite useful. However, these are necessary tools because she's the sole playable character in the DLC, so she has to be prepared to take on any type of enemy regardless of the player's set-up for her, and she needs more safety nets to avoid being killed because the player can't just switch control to an ally and revive her. On her own Yuffie is a Jack of All Stats who merely has the benefit of superior equipment to give herself an edge.
• Replacement Goldfish: Yuffie strongly reminds Sonon of his deceased little sister, Melphie, spurring his fondness and protective instincts towards the younger ninja. Yuffie however constantly reminds him that she's not his sister.
• Required Party Member: Unlike the original game, you can’t avoid recruiting her this time around. Justified, as she (and Vincent) were supposed to be required in the original, but didn't get as far due to time constraints.
• Revenge Before Reason:
  • Yuffie attempts to assassinate Rufus Shinra to avenge the indignities afflicted by the Shinra Corporation on Wutai while he's distracted offering Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith amnesty in exchange for killing Sephiroth, ignoring Barret and Red XIII trying to talk her down to avoid endangering their friends. Rufus blames Avalanche for the attempt on his life and rescinds the pardon, but there's no hard feelings—Barret noting that nothing good would've come from accepting the deal anyway.
  • When Glenn makes a public broadcast denouncing Shinra's actions and practically declaring war, she becomes very excited by the prospect that the company will finally pay for what it did to her country, not even taking into consideration that a new war will only bring more harm in the long run. In fact, Glenn is counting on the war being bloody and destructive, as he's a Sephiroth clone trying to manipulate Shinra and Wutai into massacring each other.
• Sarcasm-Blind:
  • Many of Sonon's teases directed at Yuffie go unnoticed due to her hyperactive personality:
    Yuffie: Yeah, I'm not your garden-variety Wutaian. I'm a rare bloom!
    Sonon: More like a mutant.
    Yuffie: Ooh, I'm so gonna use that!
  • In Rebirth, Cloud responding to her teasing flirtation with sarcasm leads to her assuming he's actually hitting on her and getting flustered.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • She sneaks onboard the Shinra-8 disguised as one of the Black Robes, but when Captain Titus starts gunning them down she panics and throws off her cloak before hiding behind Cloud. When Sephiroth appears in a similar manner to Nero, she runs away screaming.
  • If Cloud takes her challenging him to a duel outside Costa del Sol seriously, Yuffie will realize she's made a grievous error as Cloud slowly unsheathes a sword as long as she is tall and call for a tactical retreat.
• She-Fu: She's a female Ninja whose attacks often involve lots of acrobatics.
• Shipper on Deck: If Yuffie gets the Gold Saucer date scene in Rebirth, she spills the beans about Tifa having feelings for Cloud and says they'd make a good couple, echoing her earlier reaction in Chapter 9 after the Gongaga Reactor when she yelled at them to kiss while eavesdropping on their conversation. Despite this, she's implied to have a crush on Cloud herself—comparing him to a SOLDIER she had a childhood crush on, then kissing him on the cheek and then getting flustered at his surprised reaction.
• Short Teens, Tall Adults: To help highlight that she is much younger than everyone, Yuffie is noticeably a head shorter than almost everyone she meets.
• Single-Issue Wonk: Yuffie's first, second and last priority at all times is getting her hands on as much materia as possible. Whenever she participates in a side job, she demands payment in materia, her interest in any location is dependent on the possibility on her getting materia, and she more than once seems willfully oblivious to the fact that the party's main objective is, in fact, finding a way to stop Sephiroth and saving the Planet rather than enabling her materia gathering obsession.
• Situational Damage Attack: Banishment will become more powerful the more ATB Yuffie has expended over the course of the battle, starting at Banishment I and upgrading up to Banishment 3.
• Small Name, Big Ego: While she does have genuinely impressive skills, she rates herself far more highly than she should, even considering herself the greatest warrior Wutai has to offer. A lot of her battle victory quotes play into this.
• Smoke Out: Brumal Form has her disappear in a puff of smoke and leaves and reappears elsewhere. Using it to dodge attacks refunds the ATB used to cast it.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: Yuffie's outfit helps showcase her appropriately well-toned, athletic build and more mature look while also complementing her tough, go-getter personality.
• Trademark Favorite Food: As a snack, Da-chao beans, which are horrible jawbreakers non-Wutai natives can't bite through without injuring their teeth. The fact that they are awarded to those who scale the mountainous statue at Wutai means she is such an old hand at climbing that even a former mountain guide, Tifa, starts getting out of breath as she tries to keep up with her going up Mount Nibel.
• Trauma Button: Her encounter with Nero during the events of Episode INTERmission left a mark on her, so much so that reliving Sonon's death at his hands again was her trial in the Ancient Temple.
• Unwitting Pawn: Yuffie believes that Glenn Lodbrok is an ex-Soldier who defected from Shinra because he sympathizes with the plight of her people and due she strongly disagrees with the ceasefire that her father and the other Wutai leaders made with Shinra to end the war, she fully supports the coup d'état that Glenn carried out in her country. However, Glenn is actually a Robed Man and a thrall of Sephiroth who carries out the villain's plans, and he seeks for the war between Shinra and Wutai to be resumed so that the deaths of several people can occur to replenish the planet's Lifestream, not being concerned for the well-being of Wutai and its people as she mistakenly believes.
• Version-Exclusive Content: For a limited amount of time, her episode was only available on the Playstation 5 Intergrade version of the game, before eventually being released on PC.
• Wall Run: Just like Red XIII, she can do this to bypass platform gaps, along with other acrobatic stunts.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Deconstructed. Due to the Wutai war years ago, Yuffie is absolutely angered that her father and the other leaders decided to accept a ceasefire with Shinra instead of taking revenge on the company. Because of that, she has a romantic view of Glenn and his interim government in Wutai and upon learning of possible resumption of war between her country and Shinra, she becomes excited and barely listens when the others point out that War Is Hell and this will not be good for anyone.
• When She Smiles: Scarlet of all people comments that she has a really cute smile.
• You Fight Like a Cow: While other team members may make some quips in combat from time to time, Yuffie tends to smack-talk her opponents to a much higher degree.