When Cloud says that he's changed after 5 years following Tifa's surprise at him being considerate and giving her the flower (that Aerith gave him), she responds with a "huh." This can be read as Tifa wondering about the "5 years" part since, at that point, she doesn't remember Cloud being at Nibelheim 5 years ago. In other words, it's one of the earliest hints that Cloud is an unreliable narrator due to his mixed-up memories.
When we meet Moggie, the BGM of Gold Saucer plays as part of the 31 music discs collection. Why specifically the Gold Saucer? In the original game, Cait Sith is riding a big Toysaurus or a stuffed Moogle and there is the Mog House minigame, involving Moogles, all from Gold Saucer.
In Chapter 4, the gang consisting of Cloud, Jessie, Biggs and Wedge all head off to Jessie's home. At some point, Cloud sees 4 cats, all of them being parallels of the former 4. Why cats? Cloud's mission was to rob Jessie's home. As we know, cat burglars do that.
Why does Aerith's face look more Western than the rest of the cast? Because she's Half Ancient, so making her look more exotic than the mostly quasi-Japanese cast is a good bit of symbolism.
At first glance, it might look like Tifa's bust has been reduced. In actuality, the sports bra added to her new design is compressing them, making them look smaller than they actually are, similar to real-life female martial artists. Additionally, if you think about it, this also fits her at a character level: Tifa was usually a bit shy in the original game. Hell, if you choose to climb up the stairs at the Shinra HQ in the original game, she insists that she follow Cloud and Barret midway through because she realizes that she's wearing a miniskirt. The implications, to say the least, must have flustered her.
The end result looks rather close to her original art, something overlooked by many due to her in-game renders upping her bust a considerable amount which fan art went with if not exaggerating it further.
In some trailers, you can see people fighting alongside AVALANCHE against Shinra, makes sense as a lot of Sector 7 probably aren't happy they dropped the city/are going to drop the city on them. Or alternatively are new AVALANCHE recruits due to not liking Shinra.
It also ties in with Compilation materials and the bigger picture a bit better. Before Barret's branch, there was a much larger group of AVALANCHE that tried to hit Shinra where it hurts, and just about everyone in the slums has voiced displeasure for the corporation at one point or another if they're not apathetic. It makes sense that more potential volunteers would be out there in one fashion or another, instead of just five people and the equivalent of a mercenary handling everything, much less the logistics of where Barret and Jessie would get their infiltration data and bomb recipes to begin with. The fact that Midgar now has side-quests might also go a long way towards the group improving public relations with the slum-dwellers.
In-game, it's explained that the group Barret leads is in fact a semi-rogue cell of the larger AVALANCHE organization. While not hostile to each other, the main AVALANCHE group typically avoids contact with Barret's group.
Barret will refer to Cloud as "Stamp." "Oh, is Stamp going to bite the hand that feeds him?" If you look at the faded advertisements on the walls, there's one poster for "The Adventures of Stamp 3: Stamp Stands Up For His Friends"◊ with a dog wearing a helmet. It would seem that this is some kind of Show Within a Show propaganda for SOLDIER.
In the original bombing run mission, the supporting cast never fought, which is expanded into them using Cloud to tear up the small-time security forces outside the reactor until Barret's help is officially needed. It makes sense; Cloud's using a melee weapon and fireballs, taking on the Shinra forces relatively discretely before they can properly set up alerts, and this is why Barret's not fighting either since his gun would alert the whole area. Once they're inside the reactor and no longer need passcodes or dealing with security doors to continue, it's full license for them to go loud at that point.
Smoggers are no longer encountered in the Sector 5 Reactor alongside Shinra forces, instead appearing in the Sector 5 Slums area as discarded Shinra robots. It wouldn't make sense for Shinra to have smog machines poisoning the air their reactor-stationed troops breathe, after all.
The subtitle of the game now serves as foreshadowing - the definition of "Remake" is to "make something again or differently". The story itself is being remade and going on a different path. Also, this game is the only remake in the Final Fantasy series to use remake as a subtitle, which serves as further foreshadowing that this game is not a 1:1 remake of the original. This was confirmed to be intentional once Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was announced, with Tetsuya Nomura himself hinting at the implications.
The ending of the original game threw a few people for a loop, because after the final battle with Jenova and Sephiroth in the Core, the Meteor and Lifestream collide and we cut back to Aerith at the start of the Reactor 1 mission. Now we know why. The ENTIRE events of the remake are the events that actually play out, with Aerith having witnessed one possible future. This explains why the Arbiters intervene in this game and didn't in the original: the crew is straying too far from the path in front of them, and the Arbiters are attempting to put them back on track. The fact that Aerith gets "attacked" by the Arbiters in Chapter 2 lays credence to this, as she is changing fate by having already seen what is to come. When Cloud meets her he also sees the Arbiters, and this causes him to see visions, specifically of her original death. It also explains why Aerith knows EXACTLY what Jenova is and the threat both it and Sephiroth pose to the Planet. Lastly, it explains why Biggs, Wedge and Jessie survive the Plate collapse in this game: Aerith changed fate by defeating the Arbiters at the end of the game, which presumably means Zack also survived if the final cutscene is anything to go by, since he carries Cloud into Midgar instead of Cloud stumbling in.
It's also likely that Cloud used those seven seconds Sephiroth gave him to avert Zack's death. Given that Aerith never knew exactly what happened to him, even her prescient knowledge of how the original game went wouldn't necessarily inform her of his fate.
This puts her newfound proactive stance in a whole different light. Even before defeating the Arbiters, Aerith goes out of her way to help the people of Sector 7 evacuate because she implicitly regrets not doing more to save lives in the original timeline. Her new fighting style also reflects this change as Aerith sheds off her limitations as the White Magician Girl and masters more offensive skills to further assist the group.
Earlier on, Aerith bemoans herself for "always giving up", which Cloud comments on not being in line with what he knows of her, but makes perfect sense with the implicit regrets of not doing more, and her acceptance of her original fate in the Compilation timeline.
Aerith mentions that whenever the Arbiters touch her, she feels like she’s losing a part of herself. The Arbiters are most likely taking away Aerith’s knowledge of the future and her new character traits in order to make her more like the original Aerith.
It helps explain Aerith bringing up stuff she couldn't have possibly known prior to meeting Cloud such as his current profession and Marlene's existence when talking to Tifa.
This may also explain why Aerith is the only other playable character after Cloud up until the plate being dropped - while he is more or less going through the motions of the original story, it is Aerith who knows what is truly going on and trying to mitigate the damage as much as possible, being more direct in general and taking up more of a leadership role within the group, reaching its zenith towards the end of the game where she asks the others to help her, warning them that this will change their futures irrevocably.
Fridge Horror settles in when you realize that something still had to have happened to Zack if Cloud is still carrying the Buster Sword...
It could be that in the initial timeline, Zach either died like the original timeline or was severely injured and passed the sword to Cloud, and while the reset saved him, Cloud's timeline wasn't altered (either because he caused the shift or because he's "marked" by the Arbiters).
Why is Cloud only as Strong as They Need to Be, flubbing some jumps while pulling off amazing feats in other cases? Just because he's a Super-Soldier doesn't suddenly mean he's The Ace — and he's still a young adult way in over his head, and fairly new to this whole thing. The guy was a rifleman with determination for days, not a proper SOLDIER with full training. This reflects itself in his combat style, too; for all of his false claims of 1st Class badassery and his sleight of hand in dealing with the Buster Sword, he's effectively on-par with the rest of his teammates in output and arguably less effective in single target damage than Tifa, who is running off of pure hardcore martial arts training that would put his grunt work to shame. Cloud's effectively Strong, but Unskilled and brute-forcing his way to victory by sheer superhuman reflex and force of will.
Jessie dreaming up romanticist scenarios with Cloud during the first motorcycle chase, along with overall being more extroverted and flirty compared to the original. In this continuity, Jessie was explicitly confirmed to have been aiming to be an actress before joining AVALANCHE, with her first big role being Princess Rosa at the Gold Saucer. She was going to be in a romance play. Naturally, it would make sense for her to continue holding to some of the exuberance that landed her her big break.
From a Doylist perspective, the ending is a bit more sensible when you think about it. After all, the original game was majorly important primarily because of its insane amount of twists and turns. These twists and turns cannot be repeated, since people know what the original game is like. Aerith's death, and such, won't have NEARLY the same amount of twists...so new twists need to be done, for the game to have the same emotional impact. The change in Jessie's character is a major one, as it makes her death heart-wrenching. And the fate being changed, means that even more stuff could happen. But since the original crew are involved, the story will still be shown respect.
The Arbiters of Fate are a form of a Take That, Audience! against those who are complaining about the changes made to the game and insisting that everything play out as it originally did, despite being a Remake.
As for why they don’t intervene in situations that weren’t in the original game, such as Cloud’s first encounter with Roche, it can be seen as the audience allowing for new content so long as the new content doesn’t affect how events should play out.
Why did Sephiroth lead Cloud and his friends to the realm of the Arbiters of Fate so they could directly fight and defeat them? Because the Arbiters cannot kill Cloud and his friends if they want to keep the original timeline. Sephiroth basically locks the Arbiters into an unwinnable fight of which he wins either way and doesn't have to put himself at risk.
As for why he doesn't do it himself, despite being many times stronger than the party at that point? Sephiroth is implied to be from an alternate timeline altogether, meaning that the Arbiters would probably have no problem with outright deleting him from existence if he tried to fight them.
Also related, Sephiroth only fights Cloud and his friends after they defeat the Arbiters of Fate. Sephiroth never fought Cloud and his friends until far later in the game and if they fought before they were allowed to, the Arbiters of Fate would have put a stop to it. Getting rid of the Arbiters allowed Sephiroth to indulge in his desire to fight Cloud once again.
A central element of Cloud's character is trying to be The Stoic, albeit with moments of seriousness or levity, that's also a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. However, once you know the reasons for this, it becomes a little confusing since he's basing part of his personality off of Zack — who was anything but stoic, even after the events he'd been through. Remake re-contextualizes this by implying part of it was Cloud always being a bit standoffish in his youth as in the original game, and then having him take on an actual mercenary-for-hire title to spread his name throughout Midgar in the present. Cloud's no longer trying to pretend to be something that didn't exist, but rather pretending to be what he thinks is how a badass ex-SOLDIER should be, and cultivating his own self-image to try to go with the reputation, shifting him from partial, unwitting identity theft to literally forgetting chunks of his past to be the badass he always wanted to be. Even if he fails to realize how Chuunibyou it seems.
The infamous Shinra stairs, despite it being Played for Laughs, does have its own brilliance. Throughout their journey to the 59th floor, Barrett's HP is the only one that suffered damage loss compared to Tifa and Cloud's HP remained the same after reaching 59th floor. The brilliance is from a meta-perspective, HP can be represented as stamina of a person. Tifa is a martial artist and it's important for her to stay fit all the time meanwhile Cloud is an ex-SOLDIER that possessed superhuman quality and thus never have any stamina issue. On the other hand, Barret despite having a muscular body, he possibly don't have any kind of exercise to improve his stamina limitations, therefore he is the first one exhausted after just climbing several sets of stairs.
Alternative interpretation is both Tifa and Cloud have a small stature and only suffered minor fatigue upon reaching up their destination. This is not the case for Barret as climbing stairs required a significant amount of stamina just to climb that high, combined with his large body and that Gatling gun arm of him, it's only a matter of time before his stamina take hit earlier than the former two after climbing a few sets of stairs.
Although the new battle engine didn't allow for it, in the original game both Barret and Dyne walked with a slight limp suggesting they had a permanent leg injury from the incident that also cost them their arms. While not as prominent here it's still possible Barret also just has a bad leg that makes climbing all those stairs more difficult for him. Alternatively, it could simply be that Barret is about 15 years older than Tifa and Cloud, approaching middle age and not quite as fast as he once was.
Also when you combine age, general stamina, bulk, and additional equipment. It also makes sense that Tifa would be first up since "as the lightest one here," it also makes sense that since she's not carrying around bulky muscles, a BFS, or a gun arm, she'd be the first one up. Couple that with her endurance training that is absolutely necessary for a bare-fisted fighter would have. Tifa would likely be first seeing that there are limitations even for Cloud's SOLDIER enhancements.
Why does no one seem to notice Cloud as a 1st Class SOLDIER despite his garb and carrying the Buster Sword of Angeal and Zack? It's been five years since the public disappearance of both, Zack wiped out a great deal of the troops that were sent for him and successfully does so in the rewritten timeline so most of the regular folks and newer troopers might not know about the weapon's lineage anymore, and Cloud's ramshackle accessories on top of the uniform make it seem more like he stole the uniform or is cosplaying. Never mind the fact that he was never in SOLDIER to begin with.
To a lesser degree, considering only Angeal and Zack ever canonically wore the 1st Class uniform as Sephiroth and Genesis never bothered whatsoever, it can also be inferred that most people simply don't even recognize Cloud's colors as an actual class uniform. There's also the fact that Roche, a 3rd Class, is wearing the equivalent of a trooper's gear customized and personalized, implying that the old outfits have been tuned out of service for more standard military designs; this seems to be proven later on when you do encounter 3rd Class SOLDIER enemy units in the ShinRa Tower wearing the same type of uniform as Roche's.
Tifa mentioned that she went to look up the meaning of the flower that Cloud gave her at the start of the game and it meant "reunion". Aerith would know what the flower meant so why did she gave Cloud a "reunion" flower? It might be a hint to her having already known Cloud from the original timeline and finally got to meet him again.
In Aerith's resolution scene, her dialogue is extremely intimate and would not really fit with having known Cloud for around two days. It would however make perfect sense to show gratitude to Cloud for the memories and companionship from the original timeline, as well as thoughts and feelings she never expressed (or had the chance to) before her death.
The cutscene in Chapter 14 when Cloud speaks with Barret, Tifa, or Aerith in the flower garden is referred to as a "resolution" scene. It's common parlance for players to assume the person making a resolution is the party member waiting in the garden (indeed, almost every single video on Youtube of this moment is titled that way: "Barret Resolution Scene," "Tifa Resolution Scene," "Aerith Resolution Scene"), and it does make sense for Barret and Tifa: for Barret, he is resolving to fight for his friends, which includes his buddies in Avalanche and Aerith, and for Tifa, she is resolving to move on past all the things she's lost for the sake of saving Aerith. But Aerith herself? Her own resolution is different from the others, centering more on coming to terms with what her destined future has in store. She's not the only one who has some kind of resolution either; there's also Cloud. It's quite significant that in the dream sequence with her, Cloud has more dialogue than he does in the Barret and Tifa scenes combined. On top of that, half his lines in the Barret and Tifa scenes are generic and reactive. This is not the case with Aerith as he takes a proactive approach and even pushes back against her declaration to not fall in love, which is doubly significant because this is the first time he's asserting his own opinion. Cloud's final sentence is to say "I'm coming for you," marking the significant shift in his Character Development from cold, uncaring mercenary to the more genuinely altruistic hero he becomes from then on. The grand takeaway from all this is that it's actually both Aerith and Cloud's Resolution Scene. Chapter 14's description in the chapter selection screen also lends credence to this by summarizing the events as follows: "After rescuing Wedge, the group returns to Sector 5, but there is still no sign of Aerith. Enough friends have already been lost, and each of them resolves to fight for Aerith's safe return."
Additionally, while Tifa's scene has Cloud initially unsure how to comfort her, it's also notable in his scene with Aerith that he displays a lot more empathy and social development, even being mindful enough to mention Elmyra is also worried about Aerith's safety. When Aerith loses the nerve to tell him not to fall for her, Cloud gives her the confidence to do so by taking her message to heart and telling her to embrace the moment. All in all, this is one of Cloud's more humane moments in the game.
All three Resolution scenes are canon.
Barret’s takes place in late evening. The sky isn’t as dark as seen during Tifa’s resolution and Barret is not surprised to see Cloud up. When the group talks to Madame M, she says Barret was seen in a field of flowers, which could only be referring his resolution scene.
Tifa’s is in the middle of the night. The sky is dark, and she’s sorry to have woken Cloud. When Tifa sees Leslie’s pendant the next day, she notes that the flower means “reunion,” which she also mentions during her Resolution scene.
Aerith’s takes place just before morning, which she mentions as the scene ends. Cloud acknowledges this event the next morning by saying that "she’s calling out to me."
In Crisis Core, it was impossible for Zack to defeat the Shinra army as no matter how many he defeated, more soldiers kept coming. And while he did wipe out the army, there were still enough left standing to finish off the exhausted Zack, which makes Zack being surprised he actually finished off the whole army even more surprising as even Zack feels like there should have been more soldiers. His lines in that scene are slightly different too. In the original, there's a casual resignation that Zack accepts he's probably going to die and ok with that playing out. His lines and tone in Remake are more confident and aggressive as if Zack actually thinks he stands a chance this time, and as it turns out he really did and managed to pull through.
Even if he hadn’t arrived too late, Cait Sith/Reeve would never have been allowed anywhere near Sector 7 to help Avalanche stop the plate from falling. The Arbiters of Fate would have ensured he couldn’t help because Cait Sith isn’t supposed to appear until the Gold Saucer.
One of the added story elements to the remake is visiting Jessie's parents. There we learned she was going to be an actress at the Golden Saucer and her mother decries her for being a stagehand so far from home. Additionally, she did get a leading role and the known play at the Golden Saucer is a romance play, thus her subplot with Cloud. The brilliance comes in when this expanded bit doesn't just expand Jessie's story, but also her role in derailing the original plot and bringing the arbiters into action, such that they cause her injury to ensure Cloud joins the mission where he was fated to fall into the Sector 5 church, thereby reuniting with Aerith a canonical love interest(though not the "fated" one) from the original timeline from as well as the fact that the shadowy Arbiters are likely based off kuroko, stagehands in Japanese theatre, in addition to the Take That! mention above about fans that wanted a 1:1 remake.
Additionally, even with or without the Arbiters interference the timeline is functioning on same but different as they didn't interfere with Jessie's invitation to have Cloud join her in her dedicated chapter, which may not have even happened in the original timeline as well as the fact that neither she nor Wedge were in disguise during the Sector 5 mission. Honestly, it makes the Arbiters look more like jerkasses for ensuring she dies.
We killed fate's stagehands and saved our own.
Tifa was the last of the original four shown in trailers for the game. She's also the last of the original four introduce. note She was, however, the third to be a party member in either the original or the remake.
Marco's number as a Sephiroth clone is 49: 4 can be pronounced shi in Japanese, one definition meaning "death", while 9 is ku, some definitions for "pain/agony/suffering." Given his role, this makes a lot of sense.
Not only that, but 49 is 7-squared, a pun on just how much bigger and twisty this version of the game is.
The Arbiters of Fate look the way the Sephiroth Clones were designed for the original game.
This official TV Spot featuring a remixed The Smashing Pumpkins song invokes the era of the original release, but can also be foreshadowing towards the Remake's main themes and twists, with fate as the "cage" and trying to save what is lost regardless.
Aerith, despite having knowledge of the original game, doesn't know what happened to Zack and like the others thinks Meteor is a bad end (doesn't help that Holy wasn't shown in those cutscenes). This makes sense if her knowledge is based on what she was alive for, as learning about Zack's fate was after she had died as well as the fact Meteor was stopped by Holy. Suddenly having some knowledge but not all makes more sense for her in this context.
As for why she told Cloud not to fall for her in the Resolution scene? It's not because she has knowledge of Advent Children's events, no, it is because she knows she's fated to die and witnessed the suffering both her mothers went through from having lost their beloved. She's trying to spare Cloud that same feeling.
The scenes the Arbiters of Fate show the party are parts of the future they likely cannot change without context except for one. The scene where Cloud is about to drop Aerith’s body into the lake. The Arbiters of Fate clearly edited out Aerith’s body when they showed that vision to them. It’s certainly because Aerith’s death is integral to the planet’s ensured survival and showing the party that Aerith’s fate is to die would mean the party would fight even harder to defeat the Arbiters of Fate.
Aerith saying, "This is the point of no return," at the climax applies both to the game as well as the direction the Remake is going to take in future installments. It's basically saying, "It's been mostly a faithful adaptation of the original so far. But now, by killing the Arbiters of Fate, nothing will be exactly the same any more."
There is a lot of Adaptation Expansion, despite the Arbiters of Fate existing and trying to keep the plot on rails. It makes sense however when you consider what was expanded. Things like Cloud interacting with the Sector 7 Slums, the journey the reactors being expanded, etc. These moments all merely expand the original story, and don't fundamentally alter destiny. For example, Cloud never met Rude in the original game until later, but while his appearance is new, in the end, nothing changes as a result of the meeting, by contrast his fight with Reno at the start nearly leads to Reno's death, forcing them to step in and protect him. The Arbiters of Fate want things to remain on course but are flexible with the details.
During the ending of Chapter 17 and the expressway chase in Chapter 18, Cloud pulls off some crazy moves with his motorbike that outdoes anything he did in the original game, and even makes the motorcycle chase in Advent Children look basic. Where did he pick up these skills from? The most likely answer is: seeing the crazy tricks Roche could do in Chapter 4 and deciding to try them out himself.
During the entire expressway chase in Chapter 18, Cloud consistently drives on the right side of the pickup truck the rest of the party is in. The reason? The mission to get Aerith to safety is still on, and he's still in Mission Mode: he stays on the right side of the truck specifically so he can keep an eye on her since she's sitting in the passenger seat. The only time he drives on the left side is after the MOTOR robot is destroyed and they lose their Shinra pursuers.
A lot of weird things happen in Chapter 18 in relation to the fight against the Whispers. Like how the gang walks through a portal with their backs against the Shinra tower, but once they step through the portal they're facing the tower again; or how the swarm of Whispers covering Midgar is visible both from Cloud's perspective in the present, and Zack's perspective in the past... How does this happen? Why does it happen? Because the final battle is fought within a singularity, and those tend to majorly mess up the spacetime continuum. Singularities tend to, for example, compress spatial dimensions until there is only one direction left to go: Towards the singularity's epicentre, i.e., the Shinra tower. Another effect singularities have is that time stops moving within them, meaning that though you can observe them from a linear perspective from the outside, once you've stepped into them, you're simultaneously existing in the very moment the singularity was created, the moment it ceases to exist, as well as all time (or lack thereof) in-between. This very nature is what makes a singularity the optimal place for an arbiter of fate to reside within; because it connects the arbiter to every moment in time. This also likely means that the Midgar within the singularity is a composite version of all Midgars: It is both the Midgar seen in Zack's past, as well as the Midgar in Cloud's present and the Midgar of the future that's about to be hit by Meteor.
This is also likely how Sephiroth is able to summon Meteor with "Divine Proclamation" after he's absorbed the Whispers: He's not so much summoning Meteor as he's just invoking Midgar's destiny. And why does he do it? Because he's inviting Cloud and his friends to destroy destiny or perish trying. Either way, Sephiroth wins.
The new game over screen removes the film reel from the original, and in place of that is something that looks like a PlayStation 4 home screen background. This change makes sense since it's actually the Lifestream constantly flowing. It's literally showing everyone that IS dead.
Combined with a bit of meta-humor: Wedge being the only surviving member of the Avalanche trio post-plate collapse (and pre-arbiter fight) is fitting, considering his namesake was the only minor character to survive both of the Rebel Alliance's Death Star battles.
The first bit of foreshadowing towards Aerith's foreknowledge? When we saw Aerith in the original game's intro, her eyes were wide open, and she walked away from the mako leak fairly calmly and casually. In the ending scene, we saw the scene re-enacted, but this time with her eyes closed for a moment before opening them. Meaning the entire original game was her vision of the future and that final scene was her at end of witnessing the vision. The first sign that we're following something new? Not only does she begin the scene with her eyes closed, just like in the ending, but this Aerith is much more startled, anxious, and in a hurry to get out of that alley than the Aerith of the original game's intro because she knows what's going to happen now and still trying to process what she just witnessed.
"One-Winged Angel -Rebirth-" has literally four minutes of introduction before it starts in earnest... because the entire game to this point is Sephiroth's attempt to rewrite history so he wins. His theme is being rearranged before our very ears.
The first four minutes also sound chaotic and have both moments of villainy and moments of triumph to illustrate how both the party and Sephiroth have introduced the chaos of an uncertain future and how they both now have a chance to change the future for the better or for the worse. The theme even has hints of the Bombing Mission, a theme of sorts for Avalanche when Sephiroth counts down for Divine Proclamation.
While Cloud's dress options may seem random at first, if players chose Tifa's dress back in Chapter 3, Tifa will ask Cloud that he pick an outfit that goes with hers. Each of his dresses matches one of hers. His basic dress matches her exotic look, the dress from Sam matches her mature dress, and the dress from Madame M matches her sporty dress.
It's rather fitting that a Stealth Sequel to the original game have time travel and the characters trying to fight fate as major plot points considering that the original game's sequel also had those things as major storytelling components, although Team Squall was considerably less successful in that regard.
After beating the game for the first time, you unlock the Chapter Select feature, which allows you to jump around to different points in the game's timeline and make different choices. Just like Cloud is able to alter history after beating the Arbiters.
While there is certainly a lot of drama around Jessie's death during the Sector 7 plate collapse, one thing that isn't immediately apparent is that Jessie's parents live on the Sector 7 plate. It's not made clear whether the upper plate population was evacuated or not, but at worst, Jessie's parents were killed on the same night she dies. At best, they're essentially homeless and have no idea what happened to Jessie.
Even more heartbreaking, Jessie mentions her mother always leaves the light on in their house for her daughter if she ever returns home. So if she manages to survive, she’ll likely leave the lights on in a new home for a daughter who will never return home unless Cloud successfully changed Jessie’s fate to let her live.
Now remember this in context with the original, where no one evacuated in time besides Aerith getting Marlene out of there, and the lives and matters of everyone involved were wiped out in an instant with no chance to realize what was coming until the plate was already falling on them. We don't even know what's happened to Jessie's parents in this timeline, but odds are they were wiped out in the original as loyal Shinra citizens and a mere statistic no one alive would've ever cared for.
Tifa being scared of ghosts is this, as it ties into her reluctance to support AVALANCHE's extreme methods; her trauma over being one of the few survivors of Sephiroth's massacre at Nibelheim. She saw her father die, nearly died herself, and she was only fifteen. Of course, she'll have complex fears over death after that, as well as an unwillingness to see anyone else die.
The event when she was 10, assuming it's still part of the story - is her mother dying and she went into the mountains near Nibelheim to look for her spirit, believing she would find her there.
Tifa living only two doors down from Marco/Sephiroth Clone No. 49, looking out for him and noting that he's relatively harmless takes on a particularly spine-chilling undertone when you realize that Tifa very narrowly avoided ending up just like him back in Nibelheim, if Zangan hadn't gotten her out of there, and is currently completely unaware of that fact.
Cloud, whether due to his ties to Sephiroth or from his contact with Aerith, isn't just having strange visions of what he's seen before in a jumbled heap anymore, but what will happen. This is best highlighted when somehow his memory of Aerith's death is triggered despite the fact that he should have no way to even know of it. Congratulations, Sephiroth and the Arbiters of Fate, you've turned Cloud into a Spanner in the Works by making him an unstable variable in the timeline that could change what he feels is wrong on a dime. Which is likely exactly what Sephiroth intended on.
It's not just this scene that makes things weird, either. Numerous iconic scenes of the original Midgar section end up completely altered or even subverted thanks to things like this. Like how Aerith never says Zack's name in the original, but the moment she does here thanks to the alterations and Cloud's urging, his subconscious blocks it out because his mind explicitly can't contend with having that info, causing tension in the moment before they see Tifa. Or how certain things like Cloud meeting with Avalanche in their secret hideaway doesn't happen because Cloud's antagonizing Barret causes him to not bother trusting the merc. Even before things got weird late in the game, Cloud had been subtly subverting the timeline without even realizing it.
The Type-0 Behemoth you encounter in a side quest. It is classified as "Artificial Life" rather than "Biological" like it should be, and it has the same kind of organic "face-plate" as the Unknown Entity and Failed Experiment, along with the Volcanic Veins they have, there is a slim chance that its intel biography is lying and this behemoth Was Once a Man...
Remake emphasizes that Shinra intends to abandon Midgar and build "Neo Midgar" in the Promised Land. Remake also makes it clear that Reno wasn't just setting some explosives when he dropped the Sector 7 plate, there was a computer console he accessed and executed a command from. Which means that the ability to drop the plate was built into it during its construction. With these tweaks, it becomes clear that all of Midgar is expendable to Shinra, nothing more than a temporary base of operations meant to fill their pockets while they seek more lucrative opportunities. They have the means to destroy the entire city at a moment's notice any time they like, and they think nothing of ordering it if it helps them achieve their goals. Tens of thousands, perhaps even millions of people, are living in blissful ignorance that Shinra could kill them all with the push of a button.
There's also the fact that Shinra's claims of Avalanche as Wutai operatives is nothing more than a False Flag Operation to get the excuse to cause more War for Fun and Profit. If one remembers the original game, Wutai is just about harmless at this point after their past defeat, nothing more than a giant tourist attraction that the only remaining combatants have to hide inside of. If Shinra declared another war on them, it would potentially be corporate enslavement or even total extermination of the Wutai people to sell a false story.
The Sahagin the party fight in the sewers are explicitly identified as intelligent enough to have their own language and make their own tools. How did they end up in the sewers and where did they live before? They're probably attacking because Cloud et al is in the middle of their territory, and nobody seems to have any regrets over cutting them down by the dozens.
A subtle but interesting one. At the Shinra Corporation, the main floor Hojo does his experiments on is 66F, which is off limits to most of the employees. F is the sixth letter of the alphabet, meaning 666. This makes it clear how much a Complete Monster Hojo is, as his cruelty is similar to the Devil himself.
Given all the mysterious circumstances with the active Sephiroth, who seems to know what is to happen in the future, there's already plenty of horror for a villain in his position. But then you might realize that he's a separate entity from the Sephiroth that's physically dead and frozen at the North Crater, but very much mentally alive. Which begs the question: will the Sephiroths have their own "reunion" as one in a greater scheme, or will the Sephiroth with the knowledge of the future manipulate even himself for his own end goals? He already has subverted history and tampered with using Jenova to attack the party well before it should, messing with his original plans to the point that it's implied he has very different goals from the classic self's intentions beyond being an Immortality Seeker.
There's also the idea that this is the present Sephiroth who gained knowledge of the future much like Aerith is implied to have, but that still leaves the implication at the end of the game that Cloud actually fought the future Sephiroth as well — strongly insinuating that one way or another, there's two separate timelines of the same man working on the same game plan to nebulous ends, both of them using Cloud as their Unwitting Pawn together.
Unlike the other two members of AVALANCHE who perished in the Sector 7 plate drop in the original, the Arbiters don't target Wedge until the following night at the Shinra tower. That would mean that in the original game, Wedge survived the initial plate drop, but was trapped under the debris for an entire day until he died, presumably from either his injuries or because more debris dropped.
After the destruction of Mako Reactor 1 at the start of the game, the evacuees from Sector 1 are sent to the sector 7 slums. This is bad enough for people who don't have the know-how, skills and connections to survive in a place. But what makes this fridge horror is that the sector 7 slums are destroyed a few days later.
◊ with a dog wearing a helmet. It would seem that this is some kind of Show Within a Show propaganda for SOLDIER.
