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• Frank Masucci was the franchise's first recurring villain, and one of the worst. Loaning out his henchman Antonio "Tony" Scalisi to a group of corrupt city officials, Masucci had Scalisi kill Councilman Chuck Halsey on their behalf, then had Scalisi murdered after he was released by EADA Benjamin Stone, leaving the officials to take the fall for a racket he was complicit in. Reappearing in "The Torrents of Greed" two-parter, Masucci and his brother-in-law Harv Biegel sent thugs to assault store owners who refused to buy bootleg cigarettes, leaving one man dead and one man crippled. Indicted for, among other crimes, the murder of Trucking Union President Russel Mackey, Masucci sabotaged the prosecution by forcing leg-breaker Joe Pilefski to perjure himself, and had Biegel killed when he became concerned his brother-in-law was getting ready to turn on him. After Biegel and Mackey's bodies—along with over a dozen others—were retrieved from a mass grave site in New Jersey, Masucci found himself re-indicted, only to be assassinated on orders from his sister, Katherine Biegel, who feared, with cause, that she was next on his hit list.
• Constantin Volsky, from season 9's two-part finale "Refuge", ordered an innocent man murdered and dismembered because he had a relative who wouldn't go along with a money-laundering scheme. When he finds out that the key eyewitness for the prosecution is a 6-year-old boy, he sends assassins to kill him. They kill his mother and an A.D.A. The boy lives, but only because they didn't cut deep enough into his throat. In the second part, he orders the bombing of the precinct where the police protagonists work, just for giggles.
• Mark Bruner, from season 14's premier "Bodies", raped and murdered no fewer than 17 teenage girls and kept most of their bodies rotting in an undisclosed location so he could go and admire them as they decayed. He terrified his original defense attorney so much that McCoy helped to get her reassigned, terrified Serena, visibly unnerved Briscoe, Green, and McCoy. What made him truly monstrous was his refusal to reveal the location of his dumping ground so that his victims might be identified, specifically to torture the parents so that they couldn't find closure, and to torture Jack with the knowledge that he couldn't give them that closure.
• Leon Vorgitch, from season 17's "Deadlock", was in prison for killing five people. He then kills two guards and escape from prison. When the detectives come for him, there are even more deaths, including several students from a classroom Vorgitch had taken hostage. When Detective Green asks Vorgitch why he killed the kids, he laughs and says "Why not?" In the end, he brags to Jack and Connie that he will escape again and kill both of them.

Special Victims Unit runs on Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil, and the SVU has faced countless serial rapists and others. Even among these, however, a select few are especially heinous:

• Darryl Kern, also known as The Bowery Stalker, from season 2's "Manhunt", made a habit out of abducting, raping, torturing and killing women; his victims numbered at least 30. He was a former soldier who was discharged because he believed that soldiers enjoyed killing. His journal states that he is planning to survive an upcoming radical war, and create a new generation from sex slaves, but later admits during questioning that he's simply having fun at the expense of the police. When his hideout is found, at least fifteen bodies, later 18, are found buried in his bunker alone, including 3 kids. He also has his assistant, a mentally fragile man named Posey, help him kidnap a woman and her young daughter. Kern then kills Posey, and plans to kill his hostages before he is arrested by Canadian police.
• Arthur Blessard, from season 3's "Redemption", claimed the lives of 21 different women before he was caught. His MO would involve using his job in the IRS to enter the women's homes, and once given access would proceed to bind them to their beds where he would then beat, rape, and even bite chunks of flesh off their bodies before strangling them to death. He first started this in 1983, claiming seven victims in New York City before framing a mentally disabled man, Roger Berry, when the cops were closing on to him. With Roger taking the fall, Blessard went to other cities across the country killing even more women, as well as evolving from strangling to slitting throats. After hearing of Roger's release from prison, Blessard returns back to New York and kills more women there, all so he frame Roger once more and watch him return to prison.
• Matthew Linwood Brodus, from season 3's "Execution", was a criminal on death row. Prior to being captured, he was a killer and rapist who kidnapped women from different places and took them to his hideout. From there he would not only rape, but also torture them for several hours. The victims would succumb to this and die, at which point he would continue to rape their corpses. He has done this to at least 12 women, with the bodies mutilated and disfigured beyond identification. Before his execution could be performed, another victim appeared where he blinded her as well as performing his usual MO. When Detective Elliot Stabler sought to get a confession out him so that the victim's family could get closure, Brodus not only confessed to the deed, while showing absolutely no remorse about it, but as a way to spite him and the family he attacks the detective where prison guards to come then came and brutally beat him down severely injuring him, thus temporarily avoiding his execution.
• Charlie Baker, from season 4's "Dominance", had in the past raped his brother Billy, and then beat up his alcoholic father when they were caught; Charlie continues to beat his father. In the span of a week, Charlie has either killed, or manipulated the weak-willed Billy into killing, around 10 people, but not before forcing them to have sex with each other first. Then he kidnapped two women, killed their boyfriends, and kept them captive on a roof.
• Eugene Hoff, alias Abraham Ophion, from season 6's "Charisma", is the pedophilic leader of a cult of his 100 followers, which included his preteen victims and their families. Hoff separates the married couples, because he said that they couldn't be soldiers of God if they were slaves to the flesh, and uses all the women and girls of his cult for sexual favors, fathering 1 living and 6 dead children with them. His earliest victim was a 4-year-old Jamie Buchman, who her father caught in the same room with a near-naked Hoff, causing his family to leave the church. Growing paranoid, Hoff began to prepare his followers for war, filling their heads with the idea of the U.S. Government coming to kill them. He was also a greedy man, killing John Cramer and lying to his wife for John's million-dollar bank account and only keeping his latest victim Melanie alive so he can claim her two-million-dollar trust fund after their baby is born. Hoff is ultimately a depraved individual who believes himself to be greater than God.
• Victor Paul Gitano, from season 7's "Fault", was a pedophile who lured kids in, regardless of gender, then raped, tortured, and killed them, He had previously molested a 9-year-old-girl, and had also raped and brutally tortured a 12-year-old boy. When trying to hunt Gitano down, things don't quite go as planned. Not only does he kill one of the two kids he had with him in a subway station full of people by slashing the 9-year-old's throat, but he almost killed Benson the same way. Then, when they corner Gitano in a warehouse, he manages to get behind Stabler and hold him at gunpoint with a shotgun. Gitano, despite knowing he'd get caught or killed at this point, outright boasts that he killed the other child he had, who was only 7, and bragged that she was a "slut" and a "real little whore" before killing her, even though he never got the chance to molest her. Even as a teenager, Gitano was bad, having claimed to have sexually assaulted over a dozen children. He is described as not a "classic" pedophile, but as a "sadist...[who]...chooses children because they're just easier to control."
• Luke Dixon, from season 8's "Confrontation", is among the more heinous rapists in the series. As he thinks that children with imperfections shouldn't be accepted by the public, he tries to create a "Master Race" by impregnating his victims. He operates by using master keys to break in his victims house, forcing them to urinate so he could know their menstrual cycles, and raping them again at the day of ovulation. Dixon has done so to 19 women, including one that he murdered after she confronted him, and another who has been raped thrice and committed suicide due to the emotional trauma. Finally, before getting arrested, Dixon attempted to kill Detective Dani Beck with a knife. With the unique nature of his crimes taking Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil to a new level, Luke Dixon, despite not having an inordinately large number of victims, managed to stand out in a series dealing with sexual crimes.
• Adam Grafton, from season 12's "Pursuit", is a sadistic killer and rapist with over forty victims to his name over at least 25 years. Starting as a teenager, Adam would claim his victims—some of whom, including TV host Alicia Harding's younger sister Vanessa, were in their mid-teens at most—in clumps and paralyze them from the chest down by stabbing them in a certain area, rape them repeatedly, and viciously stab them to death to finish them off, but not before stabbing them in their lung, collapsing it and preventing the victim from screaming for help. In the present day, Adam's obsessed with mentally toying with Alicia about his role in her sister's death by stalking her and sending her bloody pieces of old evidence from the case. When Alicia insults him on live TV, Adam flies into a rage and brutally murders EADA Sonya Paxton, including before trying to hunt down and murder Alicia, which leads to his arrest. At the end of the episode, even on death row, he coldly and smugly, if not gleefully, tells Detective Benson about all the women he's killed without so much as a hint of remorse.
• William Lewis, known as "the Beast", is the Arch-Enemy of Detective Olivia Benson. His soft-spoken manner and good looks hide the fact that he is a killer, rapist, and sadistic torturer. Appearing in season 14's finale "Her Negotiation" and in season 15, his MO is going from state to state, under different aliases, kidnapping, raping and torturing women, regardless of age, for hours and even days on end. When he was young, he watched his babysitter get raped and killed in front of him; he describes it as the best day of his life. Eventually he kidnaps Benson, forces her to watch as he kills the father and rapes the mother of his defense attorney. After killing a cop and taking Benson to a house to rape her, he takes a maid and young girl hostage. When Benson turns the tables on him, he deliberately tries to provoke her to kill him, an experience he makes Olivia relive during his trial. After his escape, he kills another cop, rapes a nurse and kidnaps a young girl. When Benson confronts him, he takes her hostage again, but becomes turned off by his initial molestations, so he decides to force her into a game of Russian Roulette. He ends up fatally shooting himself as one last way of tormenting Olivia, figuring she'll be accused of his murder.
• Johnny Drake, alias Johnny D., from season 16's "Undercover Mother" and the season finale "Surrendering Noah", is a brutal sex trafficker and rapist, having spent the past two decades kidnapping women and selling them into prostitution. Often, Johnny would rape them himself or order his men to gang rape them. One of his victims was a young woman named Eli, with whom he conceived a child. When first arrested, Johnny is caught with four prisoners in his hideout, taking one of them at gunpoint. Johnny is charged with seventeen accounts of kidnapping, rape and trafficking, but learns of his son Noah, whom Benson is adopting; he decides to use Noah as his ticket to freedom, making Benson out to be a woman with a vendetta, and seeks parental rights for Noah to spite Benson's wish not have Noah be part of that kind of life. To intimidate his witnesses, he has one of his pimps murdered, but when five of them testify anyways, he snaps in court, taking one officer hostage, and shooting another officer and the judge, before killing said hostage and attempting to kill Detective Nick Amaro.

Cloud Strife

Click ^here  to see Cloud in his Advent Children attire.

A former top-ranking member of Shinra's elite paramilitary unit, SOLDIER. Now working as a mercenary-for-hire, Cloud takes a job with the anti-Shinra organization AVALANCHE to bring down his old employers. It's revealed during the game that he isn't what he seems: Cloud failed to qualify for SOLDIER and instead took a job as an infantryman. During a mission to Nibelheim with Sephiroth and his best friend and SOLDIER 1st Class Zack Fair, Sephiroth went berserk and injured Cloud and Zack, who were taken away as lab experiments for Professor Hojo. Zack broke them out years later but died in the escape, and Cloud, suffering from a great deal of physical and psychological trauma, impressed Zack's memories on his own, creating a false past and a false personality to match it. After the truth is revealed he suffers a Heroic BSoD, but thanks to a Journey to the Center of the Mind, he comes to terms with who he is and rebuilds his persona from the ground up.

• Adorkable: At times. He says things like "let's mosey" and has never been on a date before. Beneath his impersonation of Zack, this is his true personality.
• Always Save the Girl: No matter the circumstance, Cloud drops everything to save Tifa and/or Aerith if they're in danger.
• Angst: Boatloads of it. Most of it's justified too — if you came to the realization that the life you thought you had lived was a lie and you had spent the last four-five years comatose due to lab experiments after your hero and idol burned your hometown to the ground and left you for dead, you'd probably have some issues to work through too.
• Animal Motifs: Wolves, specifically Fenrir, the name of the wolf that follows him in Advent Children and of his Cool Bike, which debuted in the same movie. However, this only applies to that movie.
• Anime Hair: Cloud's infamous hair in Final Fantasy VII consists of several sharp spikes jutting into the air. Advent Children and related Compilation materials toned down the spikes to something more realistic.
• Anti-Hero: Classical Anti-Hero who pretends to be a Pragmatic Hero. He arguably evolved into an actual hero by the end of the first game.
• Ascended Fanboy: He idolised Sephiroth while growing up and got to fight at his side during the Nibelheim mission. Subverted in that he was only a Shinra mook at the time. Also, Sephiroth’s actions made him a case of Broken Pedestal for Cloud.
• Badass Biker: One remarkable segment in the original game is Cloud driving a bike with one hand while slaying Shinra mooks with the other. In Advent Children he spends much of the film riding Fenrir looking cool, and in several fight scenes fights while riding it.
• Badass Normal: Even before Hojo's experiments. As an inexperienced 16-year old, he managed to defeat even Sephiroth when they clashed.
• Batter Up!: One of his weapons is the Nail Bat, who can be found in the Temple of the Ancients or bought for 2800 gil at Junon after obtaining the Highwind.
• Beneath the Mask: Cloud spends most of the original game posing as the cold, aloof and confident mercenary he believed Zack to be. After Tifa restores his true personality during their time in his consciousness in the Lifestream, he admits to putting up a persona to protect his fragile ego.
• BFS: His Buster Sword is emblematic of this trope, though his other swords are no slouch either, such as the Ultima Weapon.
• Bifurcated Weapon: His Fusion Sword in Advent Children is six BFSs in one.
• Bishōnen: Cloud is quite pretty for a man. In the game's infamous Wall Market sequence, a cross-dressing Cloud can beat out Tifa and Aerith as Don Corneo's girl of choice for the night.
• Blade Spam: Omnislash, one of his Limit Breaks, in a series of fifteen sword attacks.
• Blow You Away: Finishing Touch, one of his Limit Breaks, launches a tornado at opponents.
• Blue Is Heroic: He is the main hero and wears a blue outfit. Played with when he was a mook at Shinra: he was still a good person but wore the blue uniform of an evil company. He goes on to wear black outfits after the original game.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Downplayed but present, Sephiroth is implied to be subtly influencing him throughout the game to make Cloud do what he wants.
• Break the Haughty: As a child, Cloud avoided the other village children because he thought of himself as superior to them and like most boys his age, tried to become a hero like his idol Sephiroth by joining SOLDIER and was promptly rejected. However, it seemed like his claims of superiority was more a case of him trying to justify his own loneliness.
• Can't Drop the Hero: Averted. There are a few segments where you can play as a party without him, most notably when Cloud becomes comatose and has to stay in Mideel.
• Catchphrase: "Not interested", repeated several times in the original game, usually as a choice in dialogue trees. In the expanded universe it's used much less often, but still pops up enough to count. Bartz lampshades it in Dissidia when he mimics Cloud's voice in a match with him.
• Chick Magnet: Tifa, Aerith, and Jessie have feelings for him. If you choose Yuffie as the Golden Saucer date, she kisses Cloud on the cheek on the gondola ride.
• Childhood Friend Romance: His relationship with Tifa, who also grew up in Nibelheim with him. Because both of them Cannot Spit It Out though, it's ambiguous how far the romantic angle goes.
• Classical Anti-Hero: Crippling self-doubt and insecurity, tons of angst and guilt, and as a kid he was a loser and a failure.
• Colony Drop: Meteorain, one of his Limit Breaks, shoots small meteors at opponents.
• The Comically Serious: Cloud tries to keep his laid back and stoic demeanor even when faced with the weirdest and most humorous situations, such as the cross-dressing sidequest.
• Courier: His career after the events of the main game; he became a deliveryman that traveled the planet.
• Crash-Into Hello: Granted it was a roof, not a person, but it's how Cloud and Aerith got formally acquainted; he crashed through the roof of her church and woke up on the flowerbed with her standing over him.
• Dark Is Not Evil: After the original game, he starts wearing black outfits, but is still as heroic as ever.
• Deadpan Snarker: Cloud has a very dry wit and tends to make small quips completely straightfaced. Under his false persona in VII wasn't as deadpan as later, but more snarky.
  Rufus: Cloud, you're an ex-SOLDIER, aren't you?
  Cloud: In my head.
• Dead Person Conversation: With Aerith in Advent Children.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Cloud's essentially been copying an actual SOLDIER named Zack through most of Final Fantasy VII.
• Declaration of Protection:
  • He promises such to Tifa, and later becomes Aerith's bodyguard.
  • In Advent Children, he feels this way towards his entire family, which causes problems as his track record of success isn't very impressive.
• Depending on the Writer: Cloud ranges from self-doubting and insecure Anti-Hero to a cocky and confident Badass, sometimes in the same appearance. Justified due to the two or three personas he's adopted and come to terms with, an entirely consistent personality is probably not going to result from this.
• Determinator: Cloud never gives up, even when all the odds are against him. Take the Nibelheim Incident; even with no powers or procedures yet performed to make him stronger, Cloud charges Sephiroth, widely considered the most powerful man on the planet, head-on. And even when impaled on his sword and hoisted into the air, he finds the strength to overpower him and turn the tables.
• Dressing as the Enemy: In Junon, Cloud disguises himself as a Shinra mook participating in Rufus’ welcoming ceremony, where he also has to learn the marching protocols.
• Disappeared Dad: Was raised by his mother instead. It seems his father died when Cloud was young.
• Disguised in Drag: The infamous crossdressing quest in Wall Market, which he undertook to save Tifa.
• Doomed Hometown: In the backstory, Nibelheim was destroyed several years ago by Sephiroth.
• Establishing Character Moment: Subverted. Cloud’s first appearance has him stylishly jumping from a train and acting like a cold and uncaring jerk. Yet, this entire personality displayed turns out to be a fabrication.
• Fake Memories: Though it's something of a journey to figure out how and why he has them.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Cloud wears only one shoulder pad, on his left shoulder. It’s best seen in his official artwork, but is a feature of most of his outfits in the Compilation.
• Flanderization: If you haven't played the original game, you'll be surprised at how non angsty Cloud was. He did angst and express hesitation and insecurities, but only at key points and for good reasons, and at the end of the game seemed perfectly fine. In his appearances since, he has been an angsty brooding loner. Square Enix states outright in The Reunion Files (basically the Ultimania for Advent Children) that they regressed his personality back to a mindset they thought fans would be more familiar with, making this a case of Pandering to the Base. In all fairness, it'd be downright absurd to think he'd just be emotionally fixed by the end of the game. Anyone who might go through what Cloud went through might need a few years to fully reconcile. Like 30 of them.
• Guest Fighter: In Ehrgeiz, an obscure fighting game made by Square in late 1990s.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Cloud falls into this with three characters.
  • Cloud (shortish spiky hair, golden blond, pragmatic but unstable) and his rival Sephiroth (really long flowing hair, silver, otherworldly and collected).
  • Cloud (short blond spiky hair, pessimistic and more innocent) and his idol Zack (long black spiky hair, optimistic and more experienced). Note also that Zack's hairstyle was actually based on an early design for Cloud's that was changed because it wasn't striking enough - Cloud is the main character, while Zack is a backstory character whose entire existence is obscured from the player, with the ironic concept that he's a more 'main character'-type person than Cloud.
  • Cloud, (male, short blond hair, cool and collected when he's not being mind raped) and Tifa (female, long brown/black hair, enthusiastic (but keeps a lot of secrets to herself, and suffers for it).
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Despite adopting the persona of a cold and distant mercenary, at his core Cloud is a noble and heroic man.
• Hairstyle Inertia: The flashback sequences in Nibelheim and later installments in the Compilation show that Cloud had that same spiky hair as a child and as a teenager.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: BFS's are preferred, although he does have a few katanas. As an infantryman, however, he favored an assault rifle and police baton.
• Heroic Resolve: In his actual showdown with Sephiroth in the past, he managed to toss him into the Lifestream chasm below them, while being stabbed in the gut by his sword and lifted in the air. Keep in mind Cloud isn’t a part of SOLDIER was just a lowly mook at the time.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: So much that he attempted to adopt a whole different personality from his own because he really hated it that much. Fortunately, he grows out of it and learns to accept himself for who he is.
• Heroic Willpower: Cloud fails at this throughout the game, with his issues of self-identity and self-loathing making him an easy puppet to Sephiroth’s mind controlling. However, he fully achieves this at his very final battle with Sephiroth, who is trying to break Cloud again, without success.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: He stood helpless and watched as Sephiroth killed Aerith. More in Advent Children than in the game.
• Ill Girl: Well, Ill Guy. In Advent Children, Cloud is suffering from Geostigma which also causes some ugly seizures. He was also afflicted with Mako Poisoning in the game.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: As a child, he thought himself better than the other kids, though it’s heavily implied he does it out of self-loathing. The arrogant mercenary persona he puts on throughout the game also fits.
• Instant Expert: Cloud is shown driving multiple vehicles throughout the game. He drove a motorbike, a dune buggy given to his party by Dio, pilots a submarine and the Highwind.
• Interspecies Romance: Cloud is a human who has a growing attraction to Aeris, the last of the Cetra race. Subverted when he ultimately hooks up with Tifa, a human like him.
• Jack of All Stats: Cloud has all around good stats and can fight with magic or weapons as needed.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Subverted. Cloud isn't actually a jerk, his personality created after the events leading up to Zack's death is. After accepting himself for who is, we see Cloud is a brave and heroic man.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: After the WEAPON attack in Mideel, Cloud and Tifa fall into the Lifestream, where she then enters his mind and help him discover who he truly is.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Two of his swords are the Murasame and the Yoshiyuki, though Cloud generally favors western styled broadswords.
• Lightning Bruiser: Cloud moves fast and has enough HP and stamina to take a good hit, and when he hits back it hurts a lot. Spin-offs like Dissidia and Kingdom Hearts instead depict him as a Mighty Glacier, moving and attacking slowly but doing a lot of damage.
• Likes Older Women: When it comes to his attraction to Aeris, which is one year older than him. In fact, his mother once suggested that he find an older girlfriend. Subverted in that he hooks up with Tifa, who is one year younger than Cloud.
• Loners Are Freaks: As a child he was anti-social and constantly got into fights because other kids picked on him.
• Made of Iron: He survived a huge fall from the Shinra Headquarters to the Midgar Church and also managed to overpower Sephiroth while being impaled on the chest by him.
• Meaningful Name: Cloud Strife, reflecting his inner turmoil and troubled life.
• The Mentally Disturbed: Cloud's an emotionally fragile young man who remembers things that never happened, suffers from bouts of depression, has a history of shutting down when life becomes too much to handle, and has serious problems with acknowledging his own self-worth. In spite of this, he soldiers on, and manages to overcome or mitigate many of these issues.
• Momma's Boy: Cloud describes his mother as “vibrant” and once invited Zack to come to his house and try her cooking. Her death at the hands of Sephiroth is one of his (many) grudges against him.
• Mook: In his backstory, it is shown this was his true rank within Shinra. He was just another one of the guards the party guns down the entire game.
• Mr. Fanservice: Well-built, handsome, heroic, and very badass.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Cloud is portrayed as a rather odd-looking and emaciated young man yet he wields the Buster Sword like if it was nothing. It is justified because of his Mako enhancements.
• New Meat: He’s the most recent addition to AVALANCHE when the story begins. In fact, the very first line of the game has Barret calling him “newcomer”.
• Occult Blue Eyes: They also glow because of his Mako infusion; this is a mark of all members of SOLDIER.
• One-Handed Zweihänder: In the original game alone, Cloud slashed Shinra mooks with one hand on the Buster Sword and the other riding a bike. Also, his famous victory animation has him twirling his blade with one arm.
• Only I Can Kill Him: Spin-offs seem to give him this role regarding Sephiroth, who shrugs off beatings from the Warrior of Light or Sora.
• The Paralyzer: Cross-Slash, one of his Limit Breaks, can randomly cast Stop on an opponent.
• Parental Substitute: To Denzel. In Advent Children, he even becomes a Disappeared Dad.
• People Jars: Cloud was subject to this for years alongside Zack at Shinra’s hands. Both being thouroughly experimented on before Zack broke out and rescued Cloud along the way.
• Pink Girl, Blue Boy: At least in the original game, Cloud wore a blue outfit while Aerith had a pink dress. Later games have him wearing black.
• Promotion to Parent: Raises Marlene and Denzel with Tifa after the events of original game.
• The Quiet One: On his own Cloud is a fairly shy and silent figure.
• Replacement Goldfish: Initially, what draws Aerith to Cloud is his resemblance to Zack.
• Right Handed Mirror: To Sephiroth. Both are the result of experimentation with Mako and Jenova cells, but while right-handed Cloud regains his sanity and becomes a hero, Sephiroth descends into an Omnicidal Maniac.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: Cloud still wears the same SOLDIER outfit even after he’s working against them. Subverted in that he never was actually part of SOLDIER and his current costume is just one Zack found and gave to him.
• Super-Soldier: SOLDIER was comprised of humans who were exposed to large amounts of raw Mako (giving them their distinctive Glowing Eyes) and, in some cases, injected with Jenova cells, granting them superhuman strength, speed, and agility. While Cloud was never in SOLDIER, Hojo's experiments were similar, if not identical, to the process of creating a SOLDIER.
• Sword Beam: Blade Beam, one of his Limit Breaks, fires a blast of energy from his sword. When targeting multiple opponents, additional beams sprout from the original to attack the other targets.
• Take Up My Sword: When Zack dies, Cloud literally takes up his sword and keeps his dreams of honor and heroism alive in his own way.
• This Loser Is You: He was a Deconstruction of RPG protagonists at the time. He idolised Zack so much that he pretended to be like him, and has to learn to be his own person.
• Tomato in the Mirror: See Dead Person Impersonation. When he finds out the truth he does not take it well at all.
• Took a Level in Badass: From a story standpoint, he went from a shy, bullied kid to a powerful warrior who defeated the all-powerful Sephiroth. Gameplay-wise, this is represented with his lackluster stats in the flashback sequence when compared to how he began the game.
• Too Many Belts: In Advent Children. The retconned SOLDIER 1st Class costumes from Crisis Core that he wears has two.
• Tragic Keepsake: The Buster Sword is not just for combat: It’s also Cloud’s way of carrying on Zack’s legacy and dreams. He learns to do it by being his own person however, and not pretending to be Zack.
• Trauma Conga Line: Goes through all of this before the game even starts:
  • Hoped to join SOLDIER but didn't end up strong enough. So he joined the regular military, befriending Zack and Sephiroth. Then he watched his idol fall into mass-murdering insanity and god-delusion and seemingly defeated him along with Zack.
  • Then, the two get captured by Shinra and are subjected to horrific experiments with Mako. Zack managed to break out and rescue Cloud from their fate, but is gunned down by mooks, and Cloud could do nothing but watch.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Given the massive amount of tragedy he experienced before the game even started, he developed this, pretending to be his fallen friend Zack.
• Troll: Through dialogue options, it's very possible to make Cloud give some pretty dickish responses purely for the lulz of it all. He even appears to be this canonically, as shown from his frequent teasing of Barret during the Midgar section of the game. It gets dropped for the most part after he undergoes his Heroic BSoD, which indicates that it may well have been another element he picked up from Zack.
• Troubled, but Cute: He wears all black and copes with a lot of mental issues, but is very good-looking and has a good heart.
• Unknown Rival: Hojo doesn't remember who he is when they have their last battle.
  Cloud: At least remember my name!
• Weapon Twirling: As part of his victory animation, his spins his sword in the air before shouldering it over his back. He can do it with a rifle when disguised as a Shinra soldier during Rufus’ welcoming ceremony in Junon.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He beats up Aerith in the Temple of the Ancients, causing her to leave the party. Granted, he was being controlled, but still…
• White Male Lead: Cloud is the protagonist in a noticeably diverse cast for its time and even today, with a black man (Barret), an Asian woman (Yuffie) and two furries (Red XIII and Cait Sith). Averted within AVALANCHE, where Barret is the leader.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: A certain, ahem, "noble incident"◊. So wholesome that Don Corneo can choose him!
• Would Hit a Girl: Twice with Aerith. Once in the Temple of the Ancients, second in Forgotten Capital, where she was praying. With a BFS. Neither time intentional, he was a puppet.
• Your Days Are Numbered: In Advent Children where he has contracted the fatal Geostigma. He does live on to appear in Dirge of Cerberus, however.