Trivia / Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

• Approval of God: According to Matthew Mercer, Steve Blum was very supportive of him being the new voice of Vincent.
• Ascended Fanon: A common fan theory is that the Weapons in the original game saw the party as worthy allies in the fight against Sephiroth and helped in their escape from Junon, most notably making a precise cut in the tower that kept Tifa prisoner. Here, they are explicitly on the party's side, with one taking Tifa to show her the battle between the White Whispers and Sephiroth, and may have conferred a piece of its power to her to sense the Lifestream. At least, they are on the party's side for now.
• Content Leak:
  • The trophy list was leaked three weeks before the release of the game itself.
  • A number of contents were leaked in the weeks leading up to the game's release, from Cloud's date with Tifa at the Gold Saucer, to the game's Gainax Ending.
• Character Outlives Actor: Keiji Fujiwara died in 2020 shortly before the game's voice recording began. His previously-recorded dialogue for Reno was repurposed for the character's in-game appearance.
• Cowboy Be Bop At His Computer: Most major websites' walkthroughs for the game list Barret and Red XIII as possible dates in Chapter 8 of the game, and suggest that having tied affinity results in Cloud going solo. This is not actually true; having a high affinity with either Barret or Red means that Cloud will explore the Saucer alone, while he can only be accompanied by one of the girls.
• Development Gag:
  • The original game was to have a subplot concerning Tifa confiding in Aerith that she didn't remember Cloud during the Nibelheim incident but it was cut. She does in this game.
  • Red XIII was originally supposed to have clones in different colors as boss fights. During the Loveless play, Nanaki plays Garm, a purple colored hellhound with the power to turn into several copies of himself.
  • The original game was to have Sephiroth explain the origin of Summons after battling the Red Dragon and acquiring the Bahamut materia with the explanation of summons going uncommented on in the game proper. The lore around the summons of VII is more explored here.
  • Tifa was originally going to have a scar on her back, caused by Cloud. It is reworked to be from Sephiroth's attack in the Nibelheim reactor on her sternum, causing Cloud to attack her from Sephiroth's manipulations making him not see it.
  • The earliest development plans of Final Fantasy 7 had only one heroine who had aspects of both Tifa and Aerith. When the decision to kill the female lead came up, the role was split into two. Rebirth shuffles around the roles the two had in the original game, most notably making Tifa the one Cloud attacks because of Sephiroth, and adds a scene where Aerith talks to Cloud on the rebuilt water tower about how she wishes that she had a childhood friend to talk about the past with.
• Died During Production: According to a September 2023 interview with Dengeki Online, Keiji Fujiwara had succumbed to cancer before the development team started recording for Rebirth, meaning the character outlived the actor. Since Tetsuya Nomura didn't want to immediately recast Reno, the scenario was adjusted to use Fujiwara's past recordings for Reno.
• Dueling Works: With Persona 3 Reload, both being remakes of RPG games that are set to release in February 2024. Coincidentally, their subtitles allude to their themes.
• Fandom Nod: A common reading of Barret and Tifa's relationship is that they are or were a couple in the original game. In North Corel a vagrant taunts Barret that Tifa is his new wife.
• God Never Said That: While Nojima's statements that No Promises to Keep was about Aerith's feelings for "everyone" were seen by some of the more diehard CloudXTifa shippers as seemingly confirming that Aerith's feelings for Cloud were strictly platonic or at most one-sided on her end and establishing their ship as absolute canon even during this point in the story, in reality Nojima never denied that No Promises to Keep was a love song. Rather he stated that the lyrics can still be seen as a love song and includes elements of a love song, but was written to be more nuanced than such and emphasizes Aerith's Character Development and feelings for everyone in her life rather than just Cloud and to a certain extent Zack.
• Meaningful Release Date: Rebirth released on February 29th, which is Leap Day. This day fell on a Thursday in 2024, which is not typically the day new games are released on. February 29th is a date that only appears mostly every four years and flits in and out, so to speak, which is astonishingly appropriate considering how the game handles Aerith's ambiguous fate and the aftermath of it.
• Multi-Disc Work: Confirmed in the Summer Game Fest 2023 trailer that the physical version will be released on two discs, the first (new) game of The Ninth Generation of Console Video Games to do so.^note Though some other games have exceeded the 100 GB capacity of Ultra HD Blu-ray Discs, these games still come on a single disc and require the user to download the additional data via a patch to lower production costs and preventing issues with the disc mastering process. However, the Japanese and Asian first running copies' Data and Play Discs data are accidentally labeled by reverse due to the disc manufacturing process error.
• Non-Singing Voice: The theme song "No Promises to Keep" is performed by Aerith in the game, but is sung by Loren Allred, not Briana White or Maaya Sakamoto.
• Orphaned Reference:
  • The unfortunate passing of Keiji Fujiwara led to some of Reno's role being given to Elena. While somewhat green, Elena often switches between flippant and devil may care, and more obsessed with proving herself and capturing the party depending on the scene. Notably, she says one of Reno's phrases Shitbirds. in the encounter at the Corel mountain, and despite the Gongaga training simulations being old data, she appears alongside Rude in the Protorelic quest.
  • The Rebirth Ultimania explains that a few plot details were cut but their presence can still be felt in the story.
    • For a while, it was talked about that the game end at the Gongaga reactor when Tifa was eaten by a Weapon, to keep her fate unknown for the next game. That is why it seems so climactic and the end of a subplot that Cloud thinks she is an imposter created from the beginning but referenced little after the fact, and why Cloud's vulnerability to Sephiroth's power isn't brought up until the Temple afterwards, nor does the Black Whispers become important until the Temple again. This is also likely why Cosmo Canyon has a new game town feel, with characters expositing about plot points and characterization details that players had just seen the chapter before and multiple times by now.
    • The final battle was supposed to be even longer, with two more phases planned. While their loss is not terribly noticeable in the finished game, it does leave out why Cloud is suddenly alone when the entire party was enveloped by the same light that in Remake brought them all to the same place unanswered. Vincent also rushes to the altar with the group, and his added backstory of wanting to kill Sephiroth seemed to hint at him joining the fight like Red did in Remake, but is absent until the ending afterwards.
• The Other Darrin:
  • In the Japanese release, Barret is voiced by Masato Funaki instead of Masahiro Kobayashi.
  • Paul Tinto replaces Greg Ellis as Cait Sith's English voice actor.
  • Matthew Mercer replaces Steve Blum as Vincent Valentine's English voice actor.
  • J. Michael Tatum takes over for Chris Edgerly as Cid Highwind's English voice actor.
• Posthumous Credit: Keiji Fujiwara succumbed to cancer in 2020. However, the game used dialogue that Fujiwara previously recorded as a way to have him "reprise" his role as Reno.
• Promoted Fanboy: Matthew Mercer, the voice of Vincent Valentine, says Vincent is one of his favorite characters, and holds FFVII in a special place in his heart.
• Recast as a Regular: Matthew Mercer played some minor roles in the previous game, but he was cast as Vincent in this game. Unlike the original game where Vincent was optional, he's a part of the main story.
• Role Reprise: Regardless of the language, most of the voice cast from FFVII Remake return to reprise their roles, with Barret's Japanese voice actor Masahiro Kobayashi being one of the few exceptions. In the case of other characters seen in Rebirth:
  • Japanese version:
    • Hideo Ishikawa reprises his role as Cait Sith^*Who had a silent cameo in Remake for the first time since 2006's Dirge of Cerberus.
    • Hiroshi Fujioka reprises Zangan for the first time since Last Order: Final Fantasy VII in 2006.
    • Kazuya Nakai returns to reprise Gilgamesh, having voiced the character back in 2022's Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.
  • English version:
    • Keith Szarabajka reprises his role as Gilgamesh, having previously voiced the character in 2022's Stranger of Paradise. Quite notable for two reasons. First, given the massive English voice recasting for all characters of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII prior to the release of Remake, Szarabajka avoided being replaced with a new actor by virtue of Gilgamesh not originating from said compilation. Secondly, John DiMaggio AKA Gilgamesh's original English voice actor first heard in Final Fantasy XII is featured in the cast of Rebirth, reprising his role as Heidegger since Remake. Even so, the voice casting had Szarabajka return as Gilgamesh, perhaps to avoid DiMaggio having more than one role.
• What Could Have Been: According to the Rebirth Ultimania, if the Remake series was to be longer than three games there was talk about which part of the game it would have ended at. One of the proposed times was at the Gongaga reactor after Cloud knocked Tifa into the Lifestream.
• Word of God:
  • Nobuo Uematsu and Kazushige Nojima each gave their own takes about the meaning of the game’s main theme, "No Promises to Keep". Uematsu, the composer, described it as a love song about Aerith's feelings, while Nojima, the lyricist, added that while it can be seen as a standard love ballad, he also wrote the lyrics to contain Aerith's thoughts about the immense burden of being a Cetra, her longing to escape from her cruel destiny, and her feelings towards everyone she holds dear, which includes not just her love interests, Cloud and Zack, but also Elmyra, Ifalna, Tifa, Barret, and other people she met.
  • According to the Ultimania, the words Cloud is speaking in the flashes while holding Aerith in the ending are the same words he spoke in the original game, that his mouth is dry, his fingers numb and his eyes burn.
• You Sound Familiar:
  • Michael McConnohie's (Choco Bill) previous roles were Cagnazzo, Fusoya, and Zeromus from the DS version of Final Fantasy IV.
  • Matthew Mercer's (Vincent) previous role was Cor Leonis from Final Fantasy XV.

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