25 Things You DIDN'T Know About Final Fantasy VII

25 Things You Didn’t Know About Final Fantasy VII

Welcome to MojoPlays and today we’re diving deep into one of the most beloved Final Fantasy games of all time to uncover all of its many hidden secrets, easter eggs and behind the scenes details you might not have known.

Real World References

Despite taking place in the fantastical world of Gaia, that didn’t stop the developers from including numerous real-world locations and landmarks within the world of Final Fantasy 7. For example, Costa Del Sol is a real-world tourist location in Spain, and the signs on the front of Tifa’s bar as well as inside it make reference to the great state of Texas. In one of the homes in North Corel, players can find a map of Japan hanging on the wall, and in Rocket Town, the inn is called the Shanghai Inn and features a large neon sign hanging on the wall in the welcome area.

Red Man

The basement area in the Corel prison seems to serve no purpose whatsoever with even the only chest in the area being completely empty, but there is actually a hidden secret within the tiny space. Hidden within a separate background of the room is a tiny Red Man which is not visible during normal gameplay. The small polygonal figure has sparked a number of debates online with theories ranging from a developer’s signature to him triggering the rare “Test Battle” scenario, although no concrete reason for his existence has ever been uncovered.

The Mistranslations

The early days of localization were a struggle, especially with dialogue heavy games such as Final Fantasy 7. Due to this and major time constraints between the Japanese and Western release of the game, there were a multitude of mistranslations or outright incorrect updates to the dialogue and signage within the game. Examples such as during the motorcycle chase cutscene, the name Midgar on the truck is incorrectly labeled as “Midgal’s” and the numerous phases of Sephiroth were incorrectly translated to “Safer Sephiroth” and “Bizarro Sephiroth” when they should have been “Sefer Sephiroth” and “Rebirth Sephiroth” respectively. One of the most infamous and hilarious mistranslated lines was Aerith proclaiming “This guy are sick.” Even Aerith’s name is incorrectly translated to “Aeris” in the North American release leading to quite a lot of discourse between fans until the name debate was settled once and for all years later.

Spoilers

Aerith’s death was a defining moment not only in Final Fantasy 7, but also for the many fans playing the game for the first time, leading to years upon years of unresolved trauma. However, Square unintentionally managed to ruin the pivotal moment years before the age of online spoilers. For the European Platinum re-release of the game, Square decided that putting a screenshot of one of the biggest spoilers in the game, namely Cloud standing over a lifeless Aerith floating in the water was the best way to attract new players. Considering the game had only been out for a few months by this time, this was a pretty substantial blunder that potentially ruined one of the most shocking moments in the entire game.

Xenogears Fantasy

One of the stranger connections Final Fantasy 7 has to another classic Square JRPG is Xenogears. Originally, Xenogears started production as Final Fantasy 7 but was deemed too dark and complicated for the Final Fantasy brand so was spun off into its own game. However, the developers of both games pay homage to one another in their respective games. Within one of the sector houses you can explore in Xenogears, you can find a poster of Tifa hanging prominently on the wall. And if you speak to Cloud when he’s in the hospital after recovering from falling into the Lifestream, he’ll mumble “Xeno… gears” and even recite the lyrics to Xenogears’ theme song “Two Small Pieces”. For those who only played one game or the other, these moments can be quite confusing, but for fans of both series, it's a moment for diehard JPRG fans to geek out over.

Nintedon’t

Final Fantasy VII was one of the biggest releases for the then newcomer PlayStation and considering the series had been a Nintendo staple since its inception, the move to Sony’s new console marked a pretty substantial shakeup in the industry, one that led a jaded Nintendo to allegedly tell Square “Don’t Come Back”. Starting production as another 2D entry for the SNES before moving to the N64, the team’s ambition soon grew too large for the cartridge based N64 and Sony’s new disc-based technology was far more suited to Square’s vision for their ambitious seventh entry. xref Sony, still sour over their own dealings with Nintendo also took full advantage of this situation to throw shade at Nintendo and launched a marketing campaign taking shots at the Big N and their cartridge-based console, going so far as to point out how much more expensive a game of this size would cost on cartridge.

Detective Cloud

Much like any game production, Final Fantasy 7 went through its fair share of rewrites, but one idea would have given the game a completely different tone from the final product. Originally, while the basis of the story was still intact, Hironobu Sakaguchi had envisioned Final Fantasy 7 as a detective noir set in modern day New York City with hardened “Detective Joe” standing in for Cloud investigating a group attempting to destroy the Mako reactors. Oddly enough, one of the characters Joe was investigating ended up being the blue print for the Cloud we all know and love. Once Detective Joe was written out of the story, most of the blueprint of Final Fantasy 7 remained close to what we know today, but it would have certainly been an interesting approach for a Final Fantasy game.

Midgar Pizza

Midgar has one of the most distinctive designs of any Final Fantasy hub world and its origins are surprisingly simple. Art Director Yusuke Naora explained that pizza was the main inspiration for the design and looking at an aerial view of the city, it's not hard to make the comparison. With eight perfectly cut sections of the city enclosed by large city walls, the resemblance is unmistakable. This is further reinforced later in the game when Barret compares those who live on the upper levels to “pizzas”, the mayor and deputy mayor are named after Domino’s Pizza and Pizza Hut respectively, and the soundtrack for the lower levels is even called “Underneath the Rotting Pizza” just to further nail home the metaphor.

A Man of Mystery

Not only did Yuffie and Vincent almost not make the final cut of the game, which is likely also why their recruitment is entirely missable, but Vincent especially went through a number of changes during his development. The devs couldn’t decide what to do with Vincent’s character and this likely led to his murky past with him originally being everything from a horror researcher to a detective, and even a chemist. Players don’t even learn much about Vincent until his standalone game “Dirge of Cerberus” where it goes into greater detail about him once being a Turk, something that was only ever mentioned once in the original Final Fantasy VII.

Ruby & Emerald Weapon

If you’ve ever played Final Fantasy 7, you know the sheer difficulty spike of encountering Emerald or Ruby Weapon out in the world and losing countless battles against these incredibly powerful foes. But what you might not know is that these two secret bosses weren’t in the original Japanese release of Final Fantasy 7 and were instead added for the game’s international release. The Western version released eight months after the initial Japanese one, and in that time the devs not only added Emerald, Ruby and Diamond, but even added additional details to the cutscene after Sephiroth acquires the Black Materia, showing the weapons flying out of the Northern Crater. Japanese players eventually got to face down these difficult bosses in the definitive International version of the game.

Pandora’s Box

The introduction of Materia in Final Fantasy 7 opened a wealth of possibilities for players to customize their playstyle and one could make them quite the powerhouse IF you were able to make sufficient use of the “Enemy Skill” Materia. With this Materia equipped, players could learn enemy abilities simply from the enemy using their special skills, but there was one skill in the game you get only one chance to collect, making it so rare, many players didn’t even know it existed. The Pandora’s Box skill can only be learned from the Dragon Zombies near the Northern Crater towards the end of the game, and even still, you only have the possibility of learning the skill from the very first Dragon Zombie you defeat. If you miss this chance or it fails to cast the spell, that’s it, no second chances on that save file.

One Winged Angel

Final Fantasy 7 not only has some of the series’ best music but also its most recognizable and without a doubt the fan favorite track is Sephiroth’s theme “One Winged Angel”. Oddly enough, this iconic track has rather humble origins and was heavily inspired by Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” but there is one other source of inspiration many fans might not have caught onto. As it turns out, composer Nobuo Uematsu listened to a number of horror movie soundtracks when composing the villain’s many themes and the one that he gravitated to the most was Alfred Hitchcock’s seminar horror film “Psycho”, which if you really think about how cold and downright menacingly psychotic Norman Bates is, it’s a fair comparison.

Sephiroth’s Final Forms

The climactic battle against Sephiroth’s many forms at the end of the game is the perfect encapsulation of everything the game has been building up to this point and likewise, the battles themselves are equally challenging to meet the stakes. However, there are actually a few things you can do during these final encounters that can make the numerous stages easier or harder on yourself. For example, if you cast Knights of the Round during the Jenova Synthesis battle, Safer Sephiroth gains an additional 80,000 HP. But you can also reduce Safer Sephiroth’s HP by repeatedly defeating Bizarro Sephiroth’s head in the previous fight which can reduce Safer Sephiroth’s HP by 100 each time reducing his overall HP by 900. Not a significant amount, but anything helps.

Avalanche

The Final Fantasy series is well known for their large cast of characters in each game, but FF7’s cast was originally much smaller than it ended up being in the end. It’s hard to imagine FF7 without the now iconic Avalanche troupe, but the entire organization wasn’t added until much later in development. The entire story of Final Fantasy 7 was designed with Cloud in mind from the beginning and because of this, many of the other characters weren’t even part of the original game’s concept. Now iconic characters such as Tifa and Barret and even Cid weren’t part of the original plan, although Barret was a design Tetsuya Nomura had been wanting to use for some time before Final Fantasy 7 finally gave him the perfect project to do so.

The Fourth Disc

While Western players got additional content that wasn’t available in the initial Japanese release, Japanese players eventually got the North American version re-released in Japan under the Final Fantasy 7 International version. This version included an additional fourth disc titled “FF7 Perfect Guide” and contained a multitude of designs, maps and behind the scenes development insights along with highly detailed concept and in-game art of nearly every aspect of the game from characters to equipment and everything in between. These also included high resolution pictures of in-game items and areas that were normally harder to decipher on a standard CRT TV screen’s output. Unfortunately, this edition was never released outside of Japan making the mythical fourth disc incredibly rare.

A Bloody Good Time

The Final Fantasy series has always dealt with some mature themes but generally kept things typically PG rated no matter how dark the material tended to skew. However, with the advancements in technology thanks to the additional power of the PS1, the developers at Square gave the game a decidedly more realistic edge which included the use of blood for the first time in the series. While not overly explicit like in later entries, this was still a big deal for both Square and Final Fantasy as the series and genre had typically been viewed as cutesy and child-like and Final Fantasy 7 managed to break the stereotype and forge a new more mature future for the series in the process.

Star Crossed Lovers

Aerith and Sephiroth have quite a complicated backstory as the pair went through numerous phases during the development of Final Fantasy 7. Early on in development, Aerith and Sephiroth were initially imagined to be lovers, with Sephiroth filling in the role of Zack before he was added into the game. Another scenario considered the pair to be siblings, a concept which can still be seen in the two’s similar hairstyles as their character models had already been settled upon by the time this idea was scrapped. Interestingly, Tifa also didn’t exist in the earlier drafts of the game’s script and at one point there was a debate over whether it should be Aerith or Tifa who dies to Sephiroth’s blade.

The Three Amigos

Aerith’s death marked a truly pivotal moment in the narrative of Final Fantasy 7, but if one developer had their way, a lot more characters would have met their end before the game rolled credits. During the sequence in which the party parachutes into Midgar, one developer wanted all but three of the team to perish before they landed. The scenario would see the player choose their party of three before initiating the jump and everyone else would die before they hit the ground leaving only the three characters the player chose remaining alive. The rest of the team understandably rejected this idea due to its sheer absurdity, while others believed it would lessen the impact of Aerith’s death to lose so much of the team so quickly. Thankfully common sense prevailed.

Aerith Lives

Aerith’s death was understandably devastating for players experiencing this shocking moment for the first time, leading many to search for ways to save the poor flower girl. This became such a dedicated movement that some players even discovered unused code and dialogue suggesting that at some point during development that Aerith was planned to survive but outside of using cheat devices, there’s no real way to bring Aerith back to life. xref However, for those hoping to see her one last time, if you return to Aerith’s church after her death, you can briefly see a ghostly image flash in the flower bed where she first met Cloud at the beginning of their adventure.

Minigame Madness

The sheer number of minigames available for players to interact with at the Gold Saucer was unheard of at the time and is still impressive even today with each game including its own rules and mechanics. As the team grew significantly from previous entries, there was an overabundance of talented developers as the team grew from 30-40 to roughly 150 devs working full time on Final Fantasy 7. However, to make sure game development progressed smoothly, many first time or inexperienced devs were assigned to work on the Gold Saucer mine games, with some of the more experienced devs even assisting during their spare time. Even later entries in the series haven’t offered the same variety of minigames as Final Fantasy 7.

Bromance Date

Everyone is familiar with the ability to take one of your party members on a date to the Gold Saucer, but what many players didn’t know until years later was it’s possible to have a bro date with Barret. At the start of the game, every dateable character has several minor events that can apply a numerical value to their bond with Cloud and through this, the game decides who Cloud will take on a date based on who has the highest number. The game immediately skews the percentages towards Aerith, awarding her a higher starting number than any of the other characters and Barret has the lowest, meaning players will need to be especially mindful of their interactions to take their desired companion along on the date.

Red XIII’s Battle

Red XIII had no shortage of struggles and the numerous experiments at the hands of the nefarious Hojo, including the fact his name was decided by simply combining a color with a number, but there potentially would have been one final emotional arc for Red XIII to overcome. Originally Hojo would have created two clones of Red XIII, Cobalt XIV and Indigo XV and Red XIII would have been forced to fight them alongside the rest of the party. Upon defeat, Red would have asked Cloud and company to spare their lives as they were the only thing close to kin he had left. This then would have come back to haunt him towards the end of the game however as Cobalt and Indigo would have returned to the Northern Cave as mechanized cyborgs determined to prove their superiority over Red XIII forcing Red to finally put them down once and for all.

The Instances of Seven

As with all major mainline Final Fantasy games, the devs love to include references to their numbered entry within the game and Final Fantasy 7 is absolutely loaded with them. Avalanche is Sector 7 of Midgar, Tifa’s bar is called “Seventh Heaven”, the red plane in Costa Del Sol has a “7” painted on the side, the books in the library in Shinra Mansion form the numeral seven, Aerith and her mother were held captive by Hojo for seven years and seven years since Cloud left Nibelheim, the Golden Saucer has seven attractions, Meteor will impact the planet in seven days and Cloud levels up to seven after the opening battle at the start of the game. This isn’t even including the “All Lucky 7s” status if the party members health lines up exactly to 7,777. Guess seven really is the luckiest number after all.

A Very Different Villain

Sephiroth is without a doubt one of the most iconic villains in all of Final Fantasy, but earlier drafts had him more akin to Kekfa from Final Fantasy VI than the calm and collected baddie we all know and love. The idea for Sephiroth was to always have him be an imposing but capable figure, someone whose ego matched his skill, but early versions painted Sephiroth as being a villain simply because he enjoyed being evil as well as someone who reveled in the idea of killing and causing chaos with reckless abandon. This would have been explored further as Sephiroth would have had a Mako addiction and due to his excessive overuse would have led him to descend into madness. Thankfully, these ideas evolved over time into a more calculating and tragic figure whose motivations were much more understandable.

Not the First Remake

Believe it or not, the current remake trilogy wasn’t the first remake of Final Fantasy 7. Although maybe the term “demake” might be more appropriate in this case. In 2005, Chinese developer Shenzhen Nanjing Technology de-made the classic game for the Famicom. The demake of FF7 is almost identical to the original, but some sections such as the weapons and Materia plot points were cut due to the limited technology of the Famicom. Everything is recreated remarkably well in the original classic 2D Final Fantasy art style of the original Famicom and NES releases. For anyone who has replayed the original game to the point of memorization, this is a must play just for its unique approach and thankfully has also seen patches to include localization as well as graphical and gameplay improvements making it worth tracking down.

What’s your favorite bit of history about Final Fantasy 7? Did we miss anything? Share your favorites in the comments.