I've made mega-posts explaining the plot before, but I keep seeing new threads pop up asking the same questions, so I decided to make the ultimate explanatory post once and for all.
DISCLAIMER: Everything you read in this post may not be 100% accurate. Though I'm fairly certain I'm right in all explanations, I may be off in a few nuances; so I may be 99.99% accurate. Can't do much about human error. All the information I used to make this long explanation came from the various games themselves and very close observation and problem-solving. I did not use any outside materials -- just the games. I'm keeping my opinion out of this entirely -- in fact, I will explicitly tell you what is my opinion, since some things can get rather subjective. Otherwise, just assume everything is taken from information given in the original game itself.
This plot breakdown will be in a rough chronological order. There are a few things I wanted to point out first:
It's important to remember that the original game starts in media res which means "in the middle". Which also means that it takes place when a game/movie/book starts in the middle of the conflict (the climax) of a much longer story and finishes with the conclusion of said longer story. It may then go back to the beginning and middle to explain what happened that was not revealed in the first movie/book/game. Star Wars has done this, as has Homer's epic poems. As a result, a lot of this post will be spent explaining things that do not happen in the original game, but instead is laying out everything that happened before.
Second, Cloud is an unreliable narrator. That is the actual term for it -- he's the main viewpoint character: The story is told from his point-of-view. As such, you -- the player -- must take his word as truth and not question it in order to understand the world and story you're exploring. The only problem is that Cloud lies. Like a mad bastard. So, if you ever find information in here that seems to directly contradict whatever Cloud is currently saying at your point in the game, that is to be expected. He lies for most of the game.
And third (put in big letters so you can't miss it) HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.
To navigate this post, I've put up headers that you can simply CTRL + F to search for and jump to a particular spot.
Let's get started then.
2,000 years ago, in the early history of Gaia, there lived a race of people known as the Cetra. For some reason that is not revealed to us in the games, they have the ability to communicate with the planet. (I have my own theory in this matter -- I think the Cetra are simply more psychically advanced than other humans, meaning they are natural telepaths, and thus can "hear" and "speak" to the presence of the souls around them that is in all living things, and to the major conciousness that is percieved as the Planet. However, this is unproven, and is just my theory -- but a good one.)
The Cetra were guardians of the Planet, protectors and defenders against anything that may harm the planet. They had a legend (as many cultures do) of a Promised Land -- a place where there is fertile earth, gentle rains, and clear skies. Hojo says that the Cetra were nomadic, but we know that this isn't true -- the Forbidden City is a Cetra city. What kind of nomads make cities? Whatever happened to the rest of the Cetra cities must have been destroyed in the events I'm about to explain.
Despite what Sephiroth says, we do not know for sure if the Cetra were travelling around searching for the Promised Land. As you'll see later on, Sephiroth got a LOT wrong, but we do have evidence from Ifalna and the existence of the Forgotten City that the Cetra were fairly stable people -- this doesn't seem to indicate a "travelling" lifestyle.
In any case, as we learn from Ifalna (Aerith's mother) when watching the tapes Professor Gast made, the Cetra at the Knowlespole (the northern continent) heard the cries of the Planet. They conducted a Planet-reading, which is basically them asking the Planet what was wrong. All they could ascertain was that the Planet had been delt a major injury. The exact nature of this injury is the Northern Crater itself -- a giant hole had been blown in the side of the Planet, an enormous wound.
The Planet persuaded the Cetra to leave the land, since the injury was so great that the land surrounding the Crater would be drained of Mako -- life-energy -- and be redirected to the Cater to heal it. That is why the Northern Crater is a barren, cold wasteland -- all the Mako is being funnelled into the Crater to heal it up. Not an ounce of Mako could be spared for growing crops -- that is how dire the wound was. The area would no longer support life.
The Cetra at the Knowlespole were about to leave the land they dearly loved when IT came.
Jenova.
*******
I must detour from this history lesson to explain to you what Jenova really is.
Jenova is a shape-shifting alien that rode on the back of an asteroid and crashed into the Planet. That is what caused the Northern Crater, a terrible and devestating wound.
Now, there is an important property of Jenova that you must know. In order to shape-shift, Jenova has complete control over every single cell of its body. Each cell is, in a way, aware and can respond to commands. Have you ever seen the movie "The Thing"? You should, if only once. Jenova is basically the same kind of alien as depicted in that movie. The creature as a whole isn't alive -- every single cell has a mind of its own. Of course, there has to be one, singular concsciousness to command all the cells and make them move in unison. Without that mind, the body will just sit there, doing nothing.
This is why the "Reunion Theory" works the way it does. When separated, all the cells will conciously try to reform into the larger parent mass. If they are in a host, those cells will make a kind of psychic pull to make the host travel to the location of the other cells. The cells are literally going to a kind of "reunion" of sorts, thus the name.
But the most important thing to remember is that Jenova is NOT an Ancient!
Remember all this for later -- I will be coming back to it.
*******
Back to the history lesson.
As Ifalna says, Jenova shows up showing the Cetra their dead mothers and their dead brothers, playing out specters of their past. One can assume that Jenova gained this knowledge by dipping her/its toes in the Lifestream when it impacted the Planet.
Basically, it did some research of the indigenous people before it started to kill them. When you get right down to it, the Lifestream is basically the Internet in spiritual style.
Jenova started to spread a virus amongst the Cetra, travelling from tribe to tribe, city to city, infecting them. The virus didn't just kill them -- it drove them mad, mutated them into sick, twisted nightmares of things born under alien skies. An entire civilization turned to monsters in the span of a few days. This reasonably explains why there are so few remnants of Cetra civilization -- entire cities and monuments would be destroyed first by the battle with Jenova, and anything that survived that would have become a breeding ground for monsters. The Forbidden City probably survived only because it was so isolated and protected by the Sleeping Forest -- the last bastion of Cetra civilization. The Temple of the Ancients was built after this all went down, in order to keep the Black Materia from getting into the wrong hands, probably built and guarded by the scant few survivors.
Just when it seemed the Cetra were finally done for, a last group of survivors rallied together and managed to kill Jenova. They dumped the alien's body into a chasm and left it there. The damage was done, however -- the Cetra population would never recover. It is likely that the few handful of survivors left simply melted into the larger genetic pool of the non-psychic humans, like Ifalna.
Jenova was dead -- but only in the mind. The alien intellect that sought to methodically commit genocide was vanquished, lost to oblivion.
But the body was still alive. Maybe "alive" isn't the right word. Let's look at it this way -- this creature went through the vaccum of space without a problem. Lacking a beating heart or lungs wouldn't count as much of a loss. Remember, every single cell is aware, is a separate -- but limited -- entity. Think of Jenova's body as being in stasis. With no mind to control it, the body simply sat there, dormant. REMEMBER THIS. It is very important to know that while the mind is gone, the body is still very much "alive" just not in a way that we recognize as life. There is no mind, no controlling force, and no energy being provided the body. The body isn't dead -- it is just inert.
As Ifalna says, "Even though Jenova is confined, it could come back to life at any time." (And that's exactly what happens, as we'll see later.)
The Planet had been making the Weapons during all this time, in order to combat Jenova. However, the Cetra managed to get to it first, before the Weapons were ever finished and called to battle. So, the Weapons were put to sleep. Jenova must be destroyed in order for the Planet to fully heal itself -- if the Crater was a wound, then Jenova is like a festering infection. The Planet is very still, recuperating its strength, watching Jenova, knowing that as long as a single cell of the alien exists, the war will never be over. That's what so amazing about the story of FF7 -- Cloud and Co. are actually just wrapping up a war that started 2,000 years ago.
Approximately 2,000 years later, a mega-corporation known as Shinra finds the body of Jenova. They mistake Jenova for a Cetra! THIS IS NOT TRUE! Jenova is NOT a Cetra! This is where a great deal of confusion comes from. This is important. I know I keep repeating it, but this is dire to understand the plot.
The Shinra, having grown rich on using Mako reactors that provide electricity, have heard of the legends of the Cetra -- now called the Ancients -- for talking to the Planet. But the legend that interests them most is the one concerning the Promised Land. It's supposed to be rich in Mako... and that means cash in their pocket.
So, led by Professor Gast, they take the body of Jenova back to HQ and start working on a way to "re-make" a living Cetra from the dead cells of what they THINK is a dead Cetra.
First, they started with SOLDIERS. They injected each SOLDIER with J-cells and then exposed them to Mako. This didn't always work, however -- in fact, the results were spectacular. Some of them just went brain-dead, bat-shit crazy. Some of them became sick and died. And some... got even better.
The ones that got better had to adapt to the J-cells, grow stronger from the unusual properties of the alien cells. They became strong, faster, tougher. Soldiers like Zack, in other words. Seeing this, Shinra made it a policy that anyone in SOLDIER had to have J-cells injected into them and showered with Mako. Every-day people thought it was the Mako that made these human beings so incredibly strong and tough, far more than any normal human would be capable of. (Do you really think Zack died just taking out a squad or two of Shinra goons? NO! He wiped out half a damn army!) In reality, it was the J-cells that caused this.
As Cloud says, "You see, someone in SOLDIER isn't simply exposed to Mako energy. Their bodies are actually injected with Jenova cells...... For better or worse, only the strong can enter SOLDIER." It was like a seriously screwed up eugenics program designed to produce insanely powerful soldiers. And it had great success.
So, if you get injected with J-cells and don't make it, you get discarded. REMEMBER THIS. We'll be coming back to it later.
So in any case.
Professor Gast, in his travels, finds a sole suriving Cetra. Her name is Ifalna. He stays with her through the hard winter at the Knowlespole (where the Cetra originally lived) to interview and learn from her. Eventually, he abandons the Shinra project, wanting nothing more to do with the inhuman savagery of the experiments he's being called upon to perform. He doesn't officially quit, but he doesn't tell Shinra his whereabouts either. He falls in love with Ifalna and together they have a child.
This child is named Aerith.
However, Shinra is not content to let their top scientist get away. They find him eventually and Hojo -- who's been heading the research in Gast's absence, commands the Shinra soldiers to kill Gast and take Ifalna and Aerith for study. As the last living Ancients, they are invaluable to him AND Shinra's goal of finding the Promised Land.
Gast attacked the soldiers, trying to buy time for his wife and daughter to escape, but he is killed in the process. Ifalna and Aerith are captured. Years later, Ifalna manages to escape from the Shinra Headquaters at Midgar, getting as far as Sector 7. Wounded, she gives her child into the care of a lonely widow -- Elmyra -- at the train station. Thus Aerith is kept safe in the Midgar slums. Though Shinra will eventually locate Aerith, they cannot just steal her away -- people know her now, know that she exists. Her sudden disappearance would be questioned. Even so, when Aerith starts exploring the slums on her own, they try to kidnap her. Terrible accidents happen in the slums all the time.... Even so, Aerith manages to avoid them.
While Shinra is trying to hunt down Aerith and Ifalna, Hojo continues with his experiments. He has none of the subtly (or humanity) of Gast. He marries and impregnates one of his lab assistants -- Lucrecia -- and then injects Jenova cells into her womb and their unborn child.
This child is named Sephiroth. Unlike the SOLDIERS, Sephiroth has the DNA of Jenova mixed with his own. He isn't just a human with enhanced abilites. He's basically half-alien. So Sephiroth is even stronger than those in SOLDIER. He's inhumanly powerful.
During the birth, Lucrecia was transformed in a subtle way, probably due to the effects of the J-cells. Like her child, she has become stronger, tougher -- but not quite human. Infuriated, Vincent Valentine -- a Turk that had fallen in love with Lucrecia -- confronts Hojo. Hojo incapacitates Vincent and makes him a special little side-experiment. Remember what I said about Jenova being a shape-shifting alien? Well, Hojo managed to isolate the gene that allows for the shape-shifting and transferred that ability into Vincent (some might recognize it as the Chaos gene) -- that is why all of Vincent's limit breaks are different shape-shifting forms. That is also why Vincent does not appear to age -- the J-cells have effectively no sense of "aging" since they can take on whatever form they want, young or old. Vincent will always and forever appear to be 20-something, even though he's at least 50. When he finally wakes up, he finds that all the experiments have been finished and he will sleep 30 years away in the basement of the Shinra Mansion.
Back to Sephiroth. Pleased with this success, unaware of their blunder in thinking they've made a Cetra, Shinra monitored Sephiroth's progress. They put him into the SOLDIER program, and Sephiroth becomes a famous war-hero. The war with Wutai comes to a close, but Sephiroth is still a well-known war hero. The space program is started but an abortive launch scraps the rest of the program as well as the dreams of a young pilot named Cid Highwind.
Shortly after this, Tifa's mother dies. Distraught, Tifa goes to find her mother's "soul" which local legend holds to be in Mt. Nibel. Cloud joins her to make sure that she doesn't come to harm. Tifa slips and falls, tumbling down a cliff, though Cloud tries to save her. Tifa is in a coma for three days. Tifa's father blames Cloud for the incident who is distressed that he was so weak. Angry at his inability to save Tifa, he swears he'll become as strong as his childhood hero, Sephiroth, when he is old enough.
When Tifa wakes up, the two become a bit closer until one night a young Cloud tells a young Tifa that he's going to join SOLDIER. His goal is to become famous, become known -- to get Tifa's attention, in other words. Tifa makes him promise to be her hero and come save her when she is in dire need. Cloud agrees. Tifa also begins training under a martial arts master, Zangan.
A few years later, Cloud goes to join SOLDIER -- and is found sadly wanting. Crushed, Cloud refuses to return home in such inglorious defeat of his dreams. He is ashamed of being so weak, of being found little better than a grunt. However, he meets a cool guy -- Zack. Who happens to be a SOLDIER, First-class. The two quickly become good friends and Zack starts teaching Cloud a few things on the side.
At the same time, Zack meets and dates Aerith, and writes to his parents about her while stationed in Midgar.
One day, 2 years after Cloud left home to join SOLDIER, a mission is given and the two buddies end up going along, accompanying none other than Sephiroth.
(Interesting note: Norse mythology can be found scattered throughout this game. Midgar is one letter away from Midgard, the name of the human world, in the middle of Yggdrisal, the World Tree. In Nordic myth, the goddess Hel has a great hall named -- surprise, surprise -- Nifelheim. This should tip you off as to what you should expect to find here.
Nibelheim, Cloud's hometown, has been suffering from a plague of monsters. This is the first time Cloud has been home in 2 years -- in the game, when first exploring Cloud's flashback and Sephiroth turns to the screen and says, "So, what's it like to finally come home?" he is actually talking to CLOUD. Though the first time through it seems like he's talking to Zack, it's actually Cloud he's talking to -- and Cloud is the little grunt soldier on the right.
In any case, Cloud keeps the Shinra soldier mask on, concealing his identity. He had imagined returning home in glory, as a famous SOLDIER, one of the undefeatable human beings known across the world, that rank of warrior that single-handedly crushed Wutai. Instead, he's coming home as an expendable pawn, a nobody and a nothing that no one cares about. So Cloud keeps his identity hidden and becomes a mute witness to what happens next.
The group charters the best guide in the town -- Tifa -- to lead them to the reactor. Once there, they discover what was wrong: Hojo had been using the Mako reactors and J-cells to mutate and twist human beings into monsters -- almost exactly what Jenova had done, thousands of years ago, ironically. One of the valves has come loose, leaking concentrated Mako all over the place, causing the violent monsterous mutations among the wildlife.
This is also where Jenova's body is being held.
Seeing the name on the reactor wall and the hundreds of deformed, mutant bodies around, Sephiroth realizes that his mother's name -- Jenova -- cannot simply be coincidence.
In short, Sephiroth flips his shit.
He starts delving into the library of the Shinra mansion at Nibelheim. Since the mission is under his command, the rest of them -- including Cloud and Zack -- have to wait until Sephiroth orders the mission complete.
Instead, Sephiroth reads endless reports about Jenova -- Shinra's bungled reports that THOUGHT Jenova was the body of an Ancient. Since Sephiroth discovered that he was the product of the experiment to recreate a living Ancient, he does the math and thinks that he is an Ancient as well! WHICH IS NOT TRUE.
Armed with this false knowledge, furious that he was used all his life, Sephiroth started a mission to get revenge, supposedly because the 'traitors' (as he called Cloud) that rose up and made permanent establishments severed the treasured connection with the planet.
That is all bullshit. It's wild conjecture mixed with lies and mistakes. In truth, his mission is to get revenge on those who created him for their personal gain. Sephiroth's story is sad in the fact that he was never accorded the affection and attention every soul desires. His was not the creation of love but the creation of profit.
He is an animal, bred to lead Shinra to their 'Promised Land' so they can set up more Mako reactors to get rich. Sephiroth knew this. He hated the fact that he was a pawn, an expendable tool, used all his life to fatten Shinra's wallet -- and he also owes his very existence to Shinra, a bitter irony. This is why he was so vehement when he swore Shinra would never find the Promised Land. It wasn't because he wanted to protect it -- it's because he wanted to spite Shinra. He was operating entirely for his own goals.
THAT is his true motivation for going AWOL -- but he says differently, to cast himself in a righteous, noble light. It takes a bit of investigating to find the real reason, though. (I'll repeat it again, because this is the tricky part.) He has found an enemy for him to hate (the ones who opposed the 'Cetra' and which he accuses Cloud and the rest of humanity to be a part of) and goes on a mission to turn himself into a god of sorts so he can destroy them. It's important to remember that Sephiroth believes himself to be a Cetra himself and that Jenova is a Cetra as well! This is not true. That is where a lot of confusion comes from.
So, Sephiroth decides he's going to wipe out all the humans on the planet, starting with Cloud's hometown.
Needless to say, that was a bad idea. After Sephiroth destroyed the town, he goes to the Nibelheim reactor. There, Cloud and Zack catch up with him. Tifa got there ahead of them and had grabbed Sephiroth's sword (which he had tossed aside) and tried to attack him with it. Sephiroth grabbed the blade, wrested it from her and dealt her a savage blow across the chest. She fell down the stairs, mortally wounded. Sephiroth then entered the room where Jenova's body was held.
Zack runs after Sephiroth but quickly reemerges flying backwards. He's out for the count. Infuriated, having lost his dreams, his town, his family, his girl and now his friend, Cloud snatches up Zack's sword and goes after Sephiroth who, arrogant in his power, ignores him.
Bad move.
"Mom... Tifa... my town... give it back!" Cloud stabs Sephiroth through the gut, and for the first time in his life, Sephiroth finds himself mortally wounded. He collapses in the Jenova room. Cloud leaves and attends to Tifa, during which time Sephiroth comes out of the room with Jenova's head.
Sephiroth probably intended to take the whole body with him, but since he was wounded he could only take the head with him. Cloud once more takes Zack's sword and goes to finish off Sephiroth. He confronts the man on the catwalk above the boiling bowels of the Mako far below.
This is the famous scene where Sephiroth stabs Cloud through the shoulder and lifts him off the ground. Then Cloud manages to use that sword as leverage against him and tosses Sephiroth into the boiling Mako below before collapsing.
AT THIS POINT, SEPHIROTH IS PHYSICALLY DEAD. The body has not been destroyed, but Sephiroth is completely DEAD. I know, I know. You ask, then how can he possibly be dead if he shows up all throughout the game? Trust me, I'll explain it to you in a minute. Through sheer force of will alone, Sephiroth does not merge into the Lifestream like all souls should do. He sits there in the Lifestream, waiting, trying to find a way to exact his vengeance still.
When Shinra came to Nibelheim, they discovered the place trashed, only a handful of survivors left. They immediately knew what happened and immediately started to cover it up. They reconstructed the city in every detail they could salvage, probably by interrogating the survivors.
Then, in order to stop any mouths that might reveal that the most powerful man in the world just went AWOL, Hojo gathered up the survivors -- including Cloud and Zack -- and proceeded to subject them to the same experiment used to make SOLDIERS. We know that Zack passed this with flying colors -- Cloud, not so much. (Tifa, however, was rescued by her instructor, Zangan, who took her to Midgar for medical attention.)
Getting sumberged in Mako bombards a person with millions of memories and experiences of lives long since passed. In this veritable flood, it can be easy to lose one's identity. Think about it -- each of us are defined by our own unique experiences and memories. That is what makes us who we are.
Now imagine reaching back for a memory -- your last birthday, graduation, playing with friends and so on -- and instead of finding a familiar memory, you come up with a host of experiences not your own. How can you truly know who YOU are if there is nothing that you can recall to confirm your very own existence? In fact, how do you even know your own memories were your own and not someone elses? I want you to remember this, for it is vital to understanding what happened to Cloud and why he had such a hard time recalling the truth later on in the game.
This is what happened to Cloud -- but he was fighting it. He was half-aware of where he was, thanks to Zack rescuing them both from the Mako tanks. Maybe with time and treatment, he would've recovered fully.
However, Zack and Cloud were just outside Midgar when a Shinra army caught the two. Despite a valiant attempt by Zack, the SOLDIER is shot and killed. (Not without taking out half an army with him -- powerful testimony to the physical effects of J-cells on the host. And Zack was just a normal human -- imagine how much more powerful Sephiroth would be with the alien DNA actually woven into him!)
The Shinra soldiers decide that Cloud -- who is almost a mental vegetable -- is of no threat and chose to save the cost of a bullet by not killing him. Cloud, who is not entirely gone yet, crawls to his best friend, who gives him a last message before dying.
It was at this point that Cloud went a little insane. Please try to understand the trauma Cloud has just endured. He has lost his home, his family, his dreams, the girl he liked, had his memories ripped away from him and now he just lost his one and only friend.
I'd go crazy too, if all that happened to me.
Normally, as we see happening with the "clones" later on, Cloud should have fallen into a coma-like state and died. But the resilience of the human mind is not to be underestimated. Using the adventures told to him by Zack and mixing in his own experiences, Cloud created a world that his mind could adapt to. It was spun from half-truths and lies, but it worked. Ashamed of being weak and losing his dreams, of being unable to defend his family, his friends, even himself, Cloud decided to abandon that reality and made a new one where the story had changed, had made HIM the hero.
Cloud basically shoved aside all the crap that had happened to him and made a world that he wanted to live in, a world that he much preferred to the truth. This is where Cloud's line, "If everything's a dream, don't wake me," holds a lot of power. Cloud is living a dream -- literally! -- and has buried the truth deep in his mind, in a part of that spiky little head where only a part of him still remembers what truly happened. Cloud has just built a wall around that truth, but it is not forgotten.
That's also why we hear a lot of characters (including Sephiroth) randomly say, "Wake up!" throughout the game. The start of the game is when it's time for Cloud to stop living a dream and wake up from his illusion and start living in reality. Go back and play the game and suddenly all that random spouting of "Wake up!" will make a lot more sense. Pretty clever symbolism on the part of the writers, isn't it?
Because of the bombardment of memories, and the subsequent loss of identity, we also get to see when Cloud begins to lose his tenuous hold on this false identity that he created for himself in some places. Especially in the Temple of the Ancients, when he's laughing at the mural of Meteor. He says, "Cloud... I'm.... Cloud..." and it takes him a while to reestablish that role for himself. When the crises has passed, he doesn't think anything has happened, while the other two companions are stunned by what they witnessed. This is also why Tifa asks Cloud at Cosmo Canyon, "You really, really are...... you... right?" She has known Cloud most of her life but he doesn't seem like himself -- more like he's playing a role instead. You can see this as evidence that Cloud's constructed identity is a VERY delicate one -- holding back all those memories from the Mako is not an easy task.
Now keep in mind that a lot of what happened to Cloud at this moment is highly subjective. We never really get a full-out explanation of what he did and we're just given clues to piece the story together. Throughout the game, Cloud hears a mysterious voice that seems to know him pretty well, is asking him questions about his memories, asking him if he's alright and so forth. That voice is the part of his mind that is still wholly Cloud -- the Cloud that didn't make it into SOLDIER, that killed Sephiroth, that helplessly watched as his friend die. This other, whole identity eventually manifests as Cloud when he was just a young boy -- we see it during the scene when Cloud hands over the Black Materia, and later during the Lifestream scene with Tifa. When Cloud reconciles with that other part of him and the experiences he had during the 7 years he was living a lie, we finally get to see the whole, truly authentic Cloud.
But I'm skipping ahead.
This is where the story hits rock-bottom for our main character. After Cloud wakes up on the cliff -- now living in an illusion of his own that is entirely incompatible with reality -- he takes up Zack's sword and goes to Midgar. He forgets Zack even existed, since in his new "reality" he takes the place of Zack in several situations and there would never be a need for such a close and supportive role-model friend in this new dream. So, acting upon Zack's suggestion, Cloud works as a mercenary in Midgar for 5 years before Tifa finds him on the street and hires him to work for Avalanche.
You are no doubt already familiar with the events of the game, so I will be brief here, explaining only what needs to be elaborated upon. After joining Avalanche, after meeting Aerith and after the destruction of Sector 7, the group decides it's up to them to rescue Aerith from Shinra.
While 'touring' the Shinra Headquarters, Cloud discovers a Mako tank that contains a deformed, headless body. This is the body of Jenova. Hojo had it moved to a more secure and convenient location after the Nibelheim incident. The body is still inert -- please refer back to my explanation in section (FFS1) to review what I said about the unique properties of Jenova if you do not remember.
Later, the entire group is captured -- the would-be rescuers are now in the same boat as the person they tried to rescue in the first place.
Now here is where things get scary.
During the night, something kills nearly everyone in the building. Blood is everywhere and, most importantly, the tank that held Jenova's body was torn to shreds -- almost as if something came out of the tank!
The body of Jenova is gone and yet surivors say that Sephiroth was the one that killed everyone. And it's also Sephiroth's sword that is sticking from the back of President Shinra. So what gives?
THIS IS WHERE PEOPLE GET CONFUSED. So pay attention.
Now, remember what I said about the cells of Jenova's body? That they were individually aware but needed a single mind or conciousness to control them in unified action? Think of the cells as computers; they all have a basic programming they will run but will do nothing unless told to. All one has to do is give energy to the cells, put in the programming you want, then tell them to execute it.
Recall that Sephiroth's soul/mind/whathaveyou is sitting in the Lifestream, still seeking a way to exact his revenge against the world and all of humanity. Well, he discovered how to "recharge and reprogram" the cells of Jenova's body. It wasn't exactly hard for him to do since Jenova was sitting in a tank of Mako.
So after Sephiroth had taken control of Jenova's body, he made it shapeshift to look like him! THIS is what confuses so many people! How can Sephiroth be dead if we see him throughout the game? The answer is simple -- the Sephiroth you see walking around, the one you encounter on the ship to Junon? That isn't Sephiroth's real body. His real body has been washed up by the flow of Mako to the Northern Crater. The one you see throughout the game is actually the body of Jenova shapeshifted to look like him.
So all the times you see Sephiroth appear and a Jenova battle comes immediately afterward, that body you see is actually a small piece of Jenova. He drops a random piece of Jenova for you to fight and then zooms away. The Sephiroth that came out of nowhere and stabbed Aerith? That was actually a part of Jenova's body morphed to look like him. Jenova -- not Sephiroth -- is a puppet, jerking to the strings that Sephiroth is pulling. Only with Jenova's body was Sephiroth's soul able to do this, thanks to the unique nature of the cells.
NOW, it is also important to remember that, when you get to the temple of the Ancients, and you touch the pool for a 'story' to be told to you by the planet and a ghostly image of Sephiroth arrives -- THAT is the real soul of Sephiroth. Since the 'story' is being told in the Lifestream, and since his soul is in the Lifestream, that was Sephiroth actually talking to the characters in the Lifestream.
This is why I always find FF7 to be rather scary -- While the characters were innocently sleeping through the night, an alien appeared to come back to life, shapeshifted into the form of a dead man, and then proceeded to kill everyone in the building. This also inadvertently opened all the cells to the prison doors holding the characters. The cause of what had "rescued" them could just as easily have slaughtered them in the night. Only by some twist of fate and luck were they not discovered.
If that isn't scary shit, I don't know what is.
Eventually, the group manages to escape Midgar and decide to chase Sephiroth and thwart whatever scheme he has in mind. Cloud goes simply to get revenge. Gotta love simple motivations!
Since I see no need to recap every event in the game, I will merely skip through the various quests and encounters and land upon the events that are pertinent to explaining the plot.
I'll make a brief mention of what happens in Kalm since this one flashback is what makes people so confused. Since the group is unsatisfied with Cloud's half-answers throughout the game so far (as are the players, as I would imagine) Cloud decides to explain things to them.
Enter the famous Kalm flashback. In this story, Cloud tells the group that he -- a SOLDIER -- accompanied Sephiroth to Nibelheim.
Now I want to take a moment and point out how damn clever the writers were. In the beginning of the flashback, there is Cloud and Sephiroth and a couple of Shinra grunts sitting in the back of the truck. Now, because of my explanations earlier, we KNOW that Cloud is not a SOLDIER, and we know that he wasn't very talkative. The person that is walking around and acting all chatty is probably Zack.
But notice that 'Cloud' asks one of the Shinra grunts if he's okay, and then mentions that he -- Cloud -- never gets motion sickness.
As we all know, Cloud gets some serious motion sickness, as revealed when talking to Yuffie on the Highwind later on. So that can only mean one thing -- that grunt soldier is actually the real Cloud!
It makes sense too that, for the purpose of this warped flashback, Cloud would picture himself saying that he never gets motion sickness. In Cloud's idealized image of what a hero should be, motion sickness would be very un-heroic quality that he would want to divorce himself from. So we can see that Cloud is still playing the illusionary role of what he THINKS a hero should be. He's denying everything about himself that is perfectly human in favor of an idyllic image of herodom that he's always wanted to become. This also explains why he acts so stiffly and cold to others at the beginning of the game -- in his mind, a hero should be cool, aloof, not care about anyone, and always give off a sense of deadly power. This attitude crumbles through the course of the game as he eventually drops the act to focus on more important things.
Isn't it fun to find out these interesting little things sprinkled throughout the game?
The great majority of this Kalm flashback is blatant lies. There are a LOT of holes in there and a lot of discontinuities, but you can really only pick up on them after you've played the game a few times -- like me.
Again, interesting to note -- along with Tifa, the real SOLDIER (Zack, but in this flashback, Cloud put himself in his friend's role) and Sephiroth, only two normal Shinra grunts went with them. One of them is actually Cloud, who is still masking his identity. After the bridge collapses to Mt. Nibel, one of those grunts is lost -- Cloud is the one who survives. When Sephiroth asks the grunt to keep Tifa out of the reactor, that is Cloud blocking her way.
He was always within arms-reach of her and never said a word and she was none the wiser. Spooky, huh?
After the flashback, Tifa seems quiet and uncertain. SHE knows that something isn't right about Cloud. Cloud says that he was there at Nibelheim five years ago -- yet Tifa hasn't seen him in seven years! (Remember, Cloud was a Shinra grunt for two years before going back to Nibelheim, and then he was a lab experiment for five years before meeting Tifa in the slums.) For Tifa, he shouldn't have been there at all, and the story he told was wrong -- Sephiroth did come, and a SOLDIER was sent with him, but it wasn't Cloud -- it was Zack.
As Tifa says later on, "I felt there was something strange about the things you talked about. All the things you didn't know that you should. And other things you shouldn't know that you did..."
For her, Cloud shouldn't know about the incident at Nibelheim, yet he does. He should remember his promise to her, but he forgot. You can see why Tifa was confused, wondering why both their versions of the story were wildly incompatible. As we now know, Cloud WAS there, he just wasn't in the star role, and since he kept his identity hidden, Tifa never knew he was there. That's why their stories didn't match.
Since we see the clones all over the place, I can't really put them in a chronological order. Everything here has been pretty much explained save for these guys.
What are the clones?
Well, after Nibelheim had been destroyed, Shinra realized it had to be covered up. So they rebuilt the town and rounded up the survivors -- 12 in all -- to be turned into Sephiroth "clones".
Note that "clones" is a really bad word to describe them. As Cloud says, "Hojo's plan to clone Sephiroth wasn't that difficult. It was just the same procedure they use when creating members of SOLDIER." Which means dunking them in Mako and injecting them with J-cells.
The only difference being that with SOLDIER there is some kind of screening process to ensure that the people that undergo the procedure will come out super-improved and powerful, as with Zack. People that fail that test -- like Cloud -- become what are called the "clones". Mindless, broken things, only shadows of their former selves.
Now let's get to the big questions.
Does Sephiroth control the clones? The answer is no -- he doesn't. But he CAN manipulate them to a degree. All the clones were made to seek out Sephiroth, the idea being to follow them to the one Shinra wanted to find. Recall that because each J-cell is a limited but independent entity in its own right, all the cells will regroup if they are ever scattered. This is what makes Jenova so hard to kill -- cut it up into as many pieces as you like, they'll just keep coming back together, like the T-1000 from Terminator 2.
The clones did exactly jack-squat until Sephiroth started controlling Jenova's body. The cells that were simply dormant and inert were suddenly active. With the parent body now "alive" and active, the call went out to all the cells to regroup -- Hojo called this phenomena Reunion. That is when all the clones started becoming active. They all started travelling to wherever Sephiroth (which is really just Jenova's dead body morphed to look like him) was. That is why the characters find the clones along their journey -- both of them are following Sephiroth.
Now the question is, Was Sephiroth truly manipulating Cloud and Cloud's memories through the J-cells?
The answer is a resounding NO, as I'll explain in the next section.
Remember what I said in (FFS4) about the flood of memories and how they made Cloud question his own identity? Well, we're going to take a deeper look into what happened.
Cloud mixed up truth with dream and made an identity for himself that wasn't real, but instead was something he'd always wanted to be. This puts his hold on reality to be very tenuous at best.
Suddenly, Sephiroth comes in during the 're-visit' of the Kalm Flashback and says that Cloud does not exist. That once, perhaps, there may have been a boy named Cloud but the man standing in front of him was just an experiment. However, because of the mental stunt Cloud's brain pulled to prevent him from going crazy and catatonic, he has divorced himself from the knowledge that would easily refute the crap that Sephiroth is spouting. Sephiroth also puts Tifa's testimony into doubt by saying that memories of Cloud were planted in her mind by the J-cells and were just as fake as Cloud was.
What Sephiroth is basically doing is bluffing about what J-cells can do. For example, he's bluffing on the idea that J-cells can plant false memories in Tifa. We know this isn't true -- or at the very least, we don't have any information that would support such a claim since we know that Tifa's memories are NOT made up. It's going out on a limb on Sephiroth's part because he can't be sure it'll work -- but in this case it did. His mixture of truth and lies made Cloud doubt who he really was.
Thus, Cloud begins to doubt if his motives are truly his own. He begins to think that he really is nothing more than a puppet. He has memories... but as we know by now, those memories are heavily edited and any others that would prove Sephiroth wrong have been deeply buried in his mind. In fact, he starts to believe in these lies and doubt himself so much that he actually starts to do things he believes he has no control over.
Like handing the Black Materia over to Sephiroth, like beating up Aerith, like trying to kill Aerith under the Forbidden City. Since for Cloud dream has become just as powerful as reality, all Sephiroth had to do was to subtly change that false role Cloud had been playing. Cloud is an actor, playing a role not his own -- Sephiroth was simply changing the script to suit his needs.
Sephiroth took a little bit of truth -- for example, showing Cloud the picture the boy took at Nibelheim, a picture where Cloud is absent -- to try and "prove" that Cloud wasn't there and then mixed in a bit of bullshit ("Five years ago you were... ...constructed by Hojo, piece by piece, right after Nibelheim was burnt. A puppet made up of vibrant Jenova cells, her knowledge, and the power of the Mako. An incomplete Sephiroth-clone. Not even given a number. ...That is your reality.") to make Cloud doubt everything he thought he knew. And it worked! Sephiroth is truly a master-genius in mind fuckery. We know, however, that Cloud wouldn't be in the picture, but he was at Nibelheim. Just because he wasn't in the picture doesn't mean he couldn't have been at Nibelheim. Cloud, on the other hand, believing he was the SOLDIER all along, doesn't know that.
But as the game goes on, we keep seeing and hearing this 'voice' talking to Cloud that is actually the part of Cloud that remembers what really happened -- this TRUE identity manifests itself as Cloud when he was young. That is why when Cloud hands the BM to Sephiroth, you see the ghostly image of a younger Cloud appearing and shouting things like he doesn't have to do that, he is stronger than this. That is the REAL Cloud (not the made-up living dream Cloud) that is saying "Sephiroth is a god damned liar" and knows better but since Cloud has blocked that part of his mind with a wall of wish-fulfillment.... he doesn't know better. So he basically allows himself to believe that he's nothing but what Sephiroth says he is -- a puppet.
Cloud admits this when explaining to the group after the Lifestream scene. "It has nothing to do with Jenova Reunion. But weak people...... like me, get lost in the whole thing. The combination of Jenova cells, Sephiroth's strong will and my own weakness are what created me."
It's right there in the game -- he wasn't being controlled by Sephiroth, but Sephiroth did know what kind of fucked up reality Cloud had made for himself, and so he preyed upon those holes and weaknesses to make Cloud do what he wanted. Not once did Sephiroth ever make Cloud do something through mind-control or the J-cells. He just used Cloud's weakness against himself. The J-cells, however, WERE 'pulling' Cloud toward Sephiroth, but they did not make him a slave to Sephiroth's will.
Only afterwards, when Cloud and Tifa get dumped into the Lifestream, does this become clear. Only for the last disc do we actually get to see the true and authentic Cloud -- not the one that thought he was a SOLDIER, but the real Cloud. It's a shame how we don't get to see very much of this character.
However, this revelation has come too late and Sephiroth has already summoned Meteor.
And so the big question comes: If Cloud is such a weak person, then why didn't he end up like the clones? How did he end up becoming like someone from SOLDIER instead?
A very good question! We know that Cloud wasn't accepted into SOLDIER because he would've reacted negatively to the J-cells, when the 'successful' SOLDIERs like Zack simply adapt and improve to the cells. So how does Cloud eventually end up just like his buddy after all that?
To find the answer, look to the theme of the game: Friendship.
Through the Power of Friendship; through the support and diligence of Tifa, Cid, Barret, Red, Aerith, Cait Sith and even Vincent -- Cloud managed to pull through. Because of the stories told to him by Zack, Cloud could make a reality for himself that would allow him to keep an identity instead of just losing his mind entirely. Because of Tifa's perseverance, he managed to piece his own identity back together again and finally came to know himself.
After five long years, Cloud woke up from the dream he'd made to forget his own failures and weaknesses. And he discovered that he was strong. In all his weakness and failure, in all his self-delusion and hatred, he found true strength. So, against all odds, he pulled through what had driven countless others into madness and death.
Good thing he has a lot of friends!
So, now that Cloud's entire complicated story is out of the way, let's cover some of the other things, shall we?
One of the big confusions is why Diamond Weapon went after Midgar and why Sapphire Weapon tried to destroy Junon. Red's grandfather suggests that since the Weapons are meant to destroy anything that is harmful to the planet, it's widely believed that the attacks on the cities were meant to wipe out massive human populations -- that humans themselves were considered dangerous to the planet.
However, there is a much better reason, and one that makes much more sense. After all, if the planet wanted to wipe out humanity, why didn't it just let Jenova wipe the earth clean of all humans? See, it doesn't make sense, does it?
Recall from the very first section that the Planet is still trying to heal the massive wound that is the Northern Crater. The entire Northern Continent is a barren icy wasteland, though there are signs that it once flourished with life. Every drop of Mako is being used to try and heal that wound.
Now, what do Mako reactors do?
They take Mako out of the Lifestream circulation! That energy does not fulfill it's intended purpose. Recall also that Ifalna said that the Planet is very still, and is watching the situation very closely.
So, when Jenova (looking like Sephiroth) started walking around again, the Planet went into action. It needed every last drop of energy it could get -- but there are those cities with their reactors drawing away that much needed strength. In desperation, the Planet sends the two Weapons after Junon and Midgar -- cities with very dense populations and a LOT of Mako reactors -- to destroy the reactors and thus stop the drain on the Planet's strength. Only through the use of the Sister Ray is this plan thwarted. It saved plenty of human lives, but it also ensured that the Planet would continue to weaken. That's why Ultima Weapon runs around hovering over cities in threat of destroying them.
Another big question that goes around the forums is this: Did Aerith know she was going to die?
That, I honestly cannot answer. Red's grandfather says that Holy is activated when a soul reaches the Planet asking for help. We know that a soul reaches the Planet when a person dies. So Aerith could not have called Holy unless she died. The real question is, did she know that was what had to be done? In truth, we'll never really know. I think that perhaps she did know what had to be done, but that's just me. Even her last words to Cloud in a dream seem ominous...
"Then, I'll be going now. I'll come back when it's all over."
And as we see at the end of the final cutscene, that's exactly what she did.
Here is a list of Frequently Asked Questions. This part will be updated as questions are asked that was not covered in the main post.
1. What was Jenova's goal?
We'll never know. There is no record of what Jenova's entire intent might have been. All we have to go on is Sephiroth's twisted view of the world, and that is highly questionable.
2. Okay, so what was Sephiroth's goal?
His goal is somewhat complicated to explain. Remember that he thinks he is an Ancient and that Jenova was an Ancient as well. His goal would have to be, in a word, vengeance. All of the events in the game was done, if you recall, so that Sephiroth may get the Black Materia and use it to create a wound so great in the planet that all of the Lifestream would be in one place at one time, likely killing the planet in the process. Sephiroth intended to use that concentrated power to become a being so powerful as to be godlike and thus create a haven where there are no 'humans' that he STILL BELIEVES killed the Cetra. His warped view of the world is quite disturbing, but there you have it.
3. So why use Jenova's body?
Because he could not interact with the living world without it. Sephiroth was sitting in the Lifestream, true -- but he couldn't get the Black Materia or summon Meteor. He couldn't achieve his plan. To that end, he needed to hijack Jenova's dormant body, manipulate his pursuers into giving him the BM, and then become a god-like entity. He simply used Jenova's body as a tool to further his own ends -- which he came damned close to accomplishing. In fact, the second time the characters go to the Northern Crater and Cloud confronts him, Sephiroth says, "This is the end of this body's usefulness."
He was talking about Jenova's body he made morph into his own form -- it isn't an ambiguous statement. He had accomplished all that he had set out to do and therefore no longer needs Jenova's body any longer.
4. How do you know Jenova is a shape-shifter?
Sephiroth says it himself during the cutscene with Cloud and Tifa in the Crater.
Sephiroth: The ability to change one's looks, voice, and words, is the power of Jenova.
In other words, shape-shifting. :dave: Even greater evidence: First time in the North Crater, remember when you get to choose to hand the Black Materia over to someone for safe keeping after getting it back from Sephiroth? Of course you do. Now, remember when Tifa comes running up to that person and saying that Cloud is in trouble and needs help, and that person goes dashing off? You do! Good.
Then remember that Tifa suddenly turned into Sephiroth? :dave: Well, there you have it. That was the body of Jenova shape-shifting from one form to another, all controlled by Sephiroth.
5. Do you have a life?
No.
6. Could Aerith or another Cetra do what Sephiroth did with Jenova's body?
No -- there's only the one alien shapeshifting body on the planet! Technically, I suppose Aerith could take control of Jenova's body and shape-shift it to look like herself. But since Sephiroth got to the body first, she can't. I can only assume there is some kind of rapport between Sephiroth and Jenova's body, since the two share the same DNA in some slim manner, which would prevent Aerith wrenching away control from Sephiroth after she had died. And since the body was destroyed, there is no way to gain any more of those kinds of cells -- which we should all be thankful for! However, this does not mean that Aerith cannot manifest in some way.
7. So how could Aerith manifest without using Jenova's body?
I have no idea. The same way ghosts do, I should imagine. Or maybe she uses a spell involving cheese and a paper cup, for all I know. There's really no evidence in the games that explains how she can, but in both the game and the movie, we see that she can make herself appear and can interact with the living world. All I can tell you is that she can do it. I've no other information other than that. Your speculation is as good as mine.
8. What is the voice that Cloud keeps hearing throughout the game?
That is the subconscious self that Cloud has buried deep in his mind in order to forget what really happened. While constructing a new identity for himself, he had to largely get rid of the first one -- so he tucked it into a deep, dark corner and put a wall around it. That hidden identity is the real Cloud -- the one that remembers everything that happened, the one that has weaknesses and failures. It isn't content to just kick back in the psyche and let Cloud bumble along, though -- this hidden identity speaks to Cloud and tries to get him to remember what happend. It tries to make him wake up from the living dream Cloud is leading.
9. Did you get all this information from the game?
Yes. The only part I didn't get from the game was the game theme of friendship itself -- that I got from the extensive interviews of Advent Children. I even provided quotes when necessary to show you exactly what tipped me off to the whole underlying story. I've been piecing this all together over the course of about 7 years, and every time I play the game I find new things that I'm amazed I missed the first time around. It's a well-thought out story. Nothing is said without a double purpose.
10. How do you know that Jenova wasn't controlling Sephiroth?
A good question. A lot of people seem to think Jenova was really pulling the strings all along. If this is so, I ask you this: If Jenova could control the J-cells at any time, why didn't it just control all the SOLDIERs and have them slaughter everything? Why didn't it just "reunify" right away when it started to be separated? There are so many instances where Jenova could have acted and didn't. And trust me, Jenova would have been MUCH harder to kill than Sephiroth. How do you kills something that has no heart, no lungs, no brain?
Sephiroth was never being controlled. If anything, Jenova was the one being controlled by Sephiroth -- its dead body at least. And we know that Jenova's mind/spirit is dead because if it WASN'T then there would be no Gaia to speak of -- Jenova would've continued on it's quest to eliminate all of humanity, and since that hasn't happened we know that Jenova is dead. Only the body hasn't been destroyed.
So, I hope this clears up any and all questions about the plot of Final Fantasy VII! It's a truly masterful plot with well-thought out characters and setting. It only suffers from a lack of good story-telling. It can be very easy to miss the subtle hints and things that permeate the game. Hopefully, this post will have cleared up any confusion on the matter and you can now enjoy the game with a better idea of what's going on and appreciate the intricacy all the more.
If this post helped you and FF7 suddenly makes sense to you now, rep it! Just so I know it made a difference!
Thank you!
DISCLAIMER: Everything you read in this post may not be 100% accurate. Though I'm fairly certain I'm right in all explanations, I may be off in a few nuances; so I may be 99.99% accurate. Can't do much about human error. All the information I used to make this long explanation came from the various games themselves and very close observation and problem-solving. I did not use any outside materials -- just the games. I'm keeping my opinion out of this entirely -- in fact, I will explicitly tell you what is my opinion, since some things can get rather subjective. Otherwise, just assume everything is taken from information given in the original game itself.
This plot breakdown will be in a rough chronological order. There are a few things I wanted to point out first:
It's important to remember that the original game starts in media res which means "in the middle". Which also means that it takes place when a game/movie/book starts in the middle of the conflict (the climax) of a much longer story and finishes with the conclusion of said longer story. It may then go back to the beginning and middle to explain what happened that was not revealed in the first movie/book/game. Star Wars has done this, as has Homer's epic poems. As a result, a lot of this post will be spent explaining things that do not happen in the original game, but instead is laying out everything that happened before.
Second, Cloud is an unreliable narrator. That is the actual term for it -- he's the main viewpoint character: The story is told from his point-of-view. As such, you -- the player -- must take his word as truth and not question it in order to understand the world and story you're exploring. The only problem is that Cloud lies. Like a mad bastard. So, if you ever find information in here that seems to directly contradict whatever Cloud is currently saying at your point in the game, that is to be expected. He lies for most of the game.
And third (put in big letters so you can't miss it) HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.
To navigate this post, I've put up headers that you can simply CTRL + F to search for and jump to a particular spot.
The Calamity from the Skies (FFS1)
Enter Shinra (FFS2)
Nibelheim (FFS3)
One Layer Below Hell (FFS4)
Jenova Awakens (FFS5)
Kalm Lies (FFS6)
The Clones (FFS7)
Cloud's Story and the Lifestream (FFS8)
Conclusion (FFS9)
FAQs (FFS10)
Enter Shinra (FFS2)
Nibelheim (FFS3)
One Layer Below Hell (FFS4)
Jenova Awakens (FFS5)
Kalm Lies (FFS6)
The Clones (FFS7)
Cloud's Story and the Lifestream (FFS8)
Conclusion (FFS9)
FAQs (FFS10)
Let's get started then.
The Calamity from the Skies (FFS1)
2,000 years ago, in the early history of Gaia, there lived a race of people known as the Cetra. For some reason that is not revealed to us in the games, they have the ability to communicate with the planet. (I have my own theory in this matter -- I think the Cetra are simply more psychically advanced than other humans, meaning they are natural telepaths, and thus can "hear" and "speak" to the presence of the souls around them that is in all living things, and to the major conciousness that is percieved as the Planet. However, this is unproven, and is just my theory -- but a good one.)
The Cetra were guardians of the Planet, protectors and defenders against anything that may harm the planet. They had a legend (as many cultures do) of a Promised Land -- a place where there is fertile earth, gentle rains, and clear skies. Hojo says that the Cetra were nomadic, but we know that this isn't true -- the Forbidden City is a Cetra city. What kind of nomads make cities? Whatever happened to the rest of the Cetra cities must have been destroyed in the events I'm about to explain.
Despite what Sephiroth says, we do not know for sure if the Cetra were travelling around searching for the Promised Land. As you'll see later on, Sephiroth got a LOT wrong, but we do have evidence from Ifalna and the existence of the Forgotten City that the Cetra were fairly stable people -- this doesn't seem to indicate a "travelling" lifestyle.
In any case, as we learn from Ifalna (Aerith's mother) when watching the tapes Professor Gast made, the Cetra at the Knowlespole (the northern continent) heard the cries of the Planet. They conducted a Planet-reading, which is basically them asking the Planet what was wrong. All they could ascertain was that the Planet had been delt a major injury. The exact nature of this injury is the Northern Crater itself -- a giant hole had been blown in the side of the Planet, an enormous wound.
The Planet persuaded the Cetra to leave the land, since the injury was so great that the land surrounding the Crater would be drained of Mako -- life-energy -- and be redirected to the Cater to heal it. That is why the Northern Crater is a barren, cold wasteland -- all the Mako is being funnelled into the Crater to heal it up. Not an ounce of Mako could be spared for growing crops -- that is how dire the wound was. The area would no longer support life.
The Cetra at the Knowlespole were about to leave the land they dearly loved when IT came.
Jenova.
*******
I must detour from this history lesson to explain to you what Jenova really is.
Jenova is a shape-shifting alien that rode on the back of an asteroid and crashed into the Planet. That is what caused the Northern Crater, a terrible and devestating wound.
Now, there is an important property of Jenova that you must know. In order to shape-shift, Jenova has complete control over every single cell of its body. Each cell is, in a way, aware and can respond to commands. Have you ever seen the movie "The Thing"? You should, if only once. Jenova is basically the same kind of alien as depicted in that movie. The creature as a whole isn't alive -- every single cell has a mind of its own. Of course, there has to be one, singular concsciousness to command all the cells and make them move in unison. Without that mind, the body will just sit there, doing nothing.
This is why the "Reunion Theory" works the way it does. When separated, all the cells will conciously try to reform into the larger parent mass. If they are in a host, those cells will make a kind of psychic pull to make the host travel to the location of the other cells. The cells are literally going to a kind of "reunion" of sorts, thus the name.
But the most important thing to remember is that Jenova is NOT an Ancient!
Remember all this for later -- I will be coming back to it.
*******
Back to the history lesson.
As Ifalna says, Jenova shows up showing the Cetra their dead mothers and their dead brothers, playing out specters of their past. One can assume that Jenova gained this knowledge by dipping her/its toes in the Lifestream when it impacted the Planet.
Basically, it did some research of the indigenous people before it started to kill them. When you get right down to it, the Lifestream is basically the Internet in spiritual style.
Jenova started to spread a virus amongst the Cetra, travelling from tribe to tribe, city to city, infecting them. The virus didn't just kill them -- it drove them mad, mutated them into sick, twisted nightmares of things born under alien skies. An entire civilization turned to monsters in the span of a few days. This reasonably explains why there are so few remnants of Cetra civilization -- entire cities and monuments would be destroyed first by the battle with Jenova, and anything that survived that would have become a breeding ground for monsters. The Forbidden City probably survived only because it was so isolated and protected by the Sleeping Forest -- the last bastion of Cetra civilization. The Temple of the Ancients was built after this all went down, in order to keep the Black Materia from getting into the wrong hands, probably built and guarded by the scant few survivors.
Just when it seemed the Cetra were finally done for, a last group of survivors rallied together and managed to kill Jenova. They dumped the alien's body into a chasm and left it there. The damage was done, however -- the Cetra population would never recover. It is likely that the few handful of survivors left simply melted into the larger genetic pool of the non-psychic humans, like Ifalna.
Jenova was dead -- but only in the mind. The alien intellect that sought to methodically commit genocide was vanquished, lost to oblivion.
But the body was still alive. Maybe "alive" isn't the right word. Let's look at it this way -- this creature went through the vaccum of space without a problem. Lacking a beating heart or lungs wouldn't count as much of a loss. Remember, every single cell is aware, is a separate -- but limited -- entity. Think of Jenova's body as being in stasis. With no mind to control it, the body simply sat there, dormant. REMEMBER THIS. It is very important to know that while the mind is gone, the body is still very much "alive" just not in a way that we recognize as life. There is no mind, no controlling force, and no energy being provided the body. The body isn't dead -- it is just inert.
As Ifalna says, "Even though Jenova is confined, it could come back to life at any time." (And that's exactly what happens, as we'll see later.)
The Planet had been making the Weapons during all this time, in order to combat Jenova. However, the Cetra managed to get to it first, before the Weapons were ever finished and called to battle. So, the Weapons were put to sleep. Jenova must be destroyed in order for the Planet to fully heal itself -- if the Crater was a wound, then Jenova is like a festering infection. The Planet is very still, recuperating its strength, watching Jenova, knowing that as long as a single cell of the alien exists, the war will never be over. That's what so amazing about the story of FF7 -- Cloud and Co. are actually just wrapping up a war that started 2,000 years ago.
Enter Shinra (FFS2)
Approximately 2,000 years later, a mega-corporation known as Shinra finds the body of Jenova. They mistake Jenova for a Cetra! THIS IS NOT TRUE! Jenova is NOT a Cetra! This is where a great deal of confusion comes from. This is important. I know I keep repeating it, but this is dire to understand the plot.
The Shinra, having grown rich on using Mako reactors that provide electricity, have heard of the legends of the Cetra -- now called the Ancients -- for talking to the Planet. But the legend that interests them most is the one concerning the Promised Land. It's supposed to be rich in Mako... and that means cash in their pocket.
So, led by Professor Gast, they take the body of Jenova back to HQ and start working on a way to "re-make" a living Cetra from the dead cells of what they THINK is a dead Cetra.
First, they started with SOLDIERS. They injected each SOLDIER with J-cells and then exposed them to Mako. This didn't always work, however -- in fact, the results were spectacular. Some of them just went brain-dead, bat-shit crazy. Some of them became sick and died. And some... got even better.
The ones that got better had to adapt to the J-cells, grow stronger from the unusual properties of the alien cells. They became strong, faster, tougher. Soldiers like Zack, in other words. Seeing this, Shinra made it a policy that anyone in SOLDIER had to have J-cells injected into them and showered with Mako. Every-day people thought it was the Mako that made these human beings so incredibly strong and tough, far more than any normal human would be capable of. (Do you really think Zack died just taking out a squad or two of Shinra goons? NO! He wiped out half a damn army!) In reality, it was the J-cells that caused this.
As Cloud says, "You see, someone in SOLDIER isn't simply exposed to Mako energy. Their bodies are actually injected with Jenova cells...... For better or worse, only the strong can enter SOLDIER." It was like a seriously screwed up eugenics program designed to produce insanely powerful soldiers. And it had great success.
So, if you get injected with J-cells and don't make it, you get discarded. REMEMBER THIS. We'll be coming back to it later.
So in any case.
Professor Gast, in his travels, finds a sole suriving Cetra. Her name is Ifalna. He stays with her through the hard winter at the Knowlespole (where the Cetra originally lived) to interview and learn from her. Eventually, he abandons the Shinra project, wanting nothing more to do with the inhuman savagery of the experiments he's being called upon to perform. He doesn't officially quit, but he doesn't tell Shinra his whereabouts either. He falls in love with Ifalna and together they have a child.
This child is named Aerith.
However, Shinra is not content to let their top scientist get away. They find him eventually and Hojo -- who's been heading the research in Gast's absence, commands the Shinra soldiers to kill Gast and take Ifalna and Aerith for study. As the last living Ancients, they are invaluable to him AND Shinra's goal of finding the Promised Land.
Gast attacked the soldiers, trying to buy time for his wife and daughter to escape, but he is killed in the process. Ifalna and Aerith are captured. Years later, Ifalna manages to escape from the Shinra Headquaters at Midgar, getting as far as Sector 7. Wounded, she gives her child into the care of a lonely widow -- Elmyra -- at the train station. Thus Aerith is kept safe in the Midgar slums. Though Shinra will eventually locate Aerith, they cannot just steal her away -- people know her now, know that she exists. Her sudden disappearance would be questioned. Even so, when Aerith starts exploring the slums on her own, they try to kidnap her. Terrible accidents happen in the slums all the time.... Even so, Aerith manages to avoid them.
While Shinra is trying to hunt down Aerith and Ifalna, Hojo continues with his experiments. He has none of the subtly (or humanity) of Gast. He marries and impregnates one of his lab assistants -- Lucrecia -- and then injects Jenova cells into her womb and their unborn child.
This child is named Sephiroth. Unlike the SOLDIERS, Sephiroth has the DNA of Jenova mixed with his own. He isn't just a human with enhanced abilites. He's basically half-alien. So Sephiroth is even stronger than those in SOLDIER. He's inhumanly powerful.
During the birth, Lucrecia was transformed in a subtle way, probably due to the effects of the J-cells. Like her child, she has become stronger, tougher -- but not quite human. Infuriated, Vincent Valentine -- a Turk that had fallen in love with Lucrecia -- confronts Hojo. Hojo incapacitates Vincent and makes him a special little side-experiment. Remember what I said about Jenova being a shape-shifting alien? Well, Hojo managed to isolate the gene that allows for the shape-shifting and transferred that ability into Vincent (some might recognize it as the Chaos gene) -- that is why all of Vincent's limit breaks are different shape-shifting forms. That is also why Vincent does not appear to age -- the J-cells have effectively no sense of "aging" since they can take on whatever form they want, young or old. Vincent will always and forever appear to be 20-something, even though he's at least 50. When he finally wakes up, he finds that all the experiments have been finished and he will sleep 30 years away in the basement of the Shinra Mansion.
Back to Sephiroth. Pleased with this success, unaware of their blunder in thinking they've made a Cetra, Shinra monitored Sephiroth's progress. They put him into the SOLDIER program, and Sephiroth becomes a famous war-hero. The war with Wutai comes to a close, but Sephiroth is still a well-known war hero. The space program is started but an abortive launch scraps the rest of the program as well as the dreams of a young pilot named Cid Highwind.
Shortly after this, Tifa's mother dies. Distraught, Tifa goes to find her mother's "soul" which local legend holds to be in Mt. Nibel. Cloud joins her to make sure that she doesn't come to harm. Tifa slips and falls, tumbling down a cliff, though Cloud tries to save her. Tifa is in a coma for three days. Tifa's father blames Cloud for the incident who is distressed that he was so weak. Angry at his inability to save Tifa, he swears he'll become as strong as his childhood hero, Sephiroth, when he is old enough.
When Tifa wakes up, the two become a bit closer until one night a young Cloud tells a young Tifa that he's going to join SOLDIER. His goal is to become famous, become known -- to get Tifa's attention, in other words. Tifa makes him promise to be her hero and come save her when she is in dire need. Cloud agrees. Tifa also begins training under a martial arts master, Zangan.
A few years later, Cloud goes to join SOLDIER -- and is found sadly wanting. Crushed, Cloud refuses to return home in such inglorious defeat of his dreams. He is ashamed of being so weak, of being found little better than a grunt. However, he meets a cool guy -- Zack. Who happens to be a SOLDIER, First-class. The two quickly become good friends and Zack starts teaching Cloud a few things on the side.
At the same time, Zack meets and dates Aerith, and writes to his parents about her while stationed in Midgar.
One day, 2 years after Cloud left home to join SOLDIER, a mission is given and the two buddies end up going along, accompanying none other than Sephiroth.
Nibelheim (FFS3)
(Interesting note: Norse mythology can be found scattered throughout this game. Midgar is one letter away from Midgard, the name of the human world, in the middle of Yggdrisal, the World Tree. In Nordic myth, the goddess Hel has a great hall named -- surprise, surprise -- Nifelheim. This should tip you off as to what you should expect to find here.
Nibelheim, Cloud's hometown, has been suffering from a plague of monsters. This is the first time Cloud has been home in 2 years -- in the game, when first exploring Cloud's flashback and Sephiroth turns to the screen and says, "So, what's it like to finally come home?" he is actually talking to CLOUD. Though the first time through it seems like he's talking to Zack, it's actually Cloud he's talking to -- and Cloud is the little grunt soldier on the right.
In any case, Cloud keeps the Shinra soldier mask on, concealing his identity. He had imagined returning home in glory, as a famous SOLDIER, one of the undefeatable human beings known across the world, that rank of warrior that single-handedly crushed Wutai. Instead, he's coming home as an expendable pawn, a nobody and a nothing that no one cares about. So Cloud keeps his identity hidden and becomes a mute witness to what happens next.
The group charters the best guide in the town -- Tifa -- to lead them to the reactor. Once there, they discover what was wrong: Hojo had been using the Mako reactors and J-cells to mutate and twist human beings into monsters -- almost exactly what Jenova had done, thousands of years ago, ironically. One of the valves has come loose, leaking concentrated Mako all over the place, causing the violent monsterous mutations among the wildlife.
This is also where Jenova's body is being held.
Seeing the name on the reactor wall and the hundreds of deformed, mutant bodies around, Sephiroth realizes that his mother's name -- Jenova -- cannot simply be coincidence.
In short, Sephiroth flips his shit.
He starts delving into the library of the Shinra mansion at Nibelheim. Since the mission is under his command, the rest of them -- including Cloud and Zack -- have to wait until Sephiroth orders the mission complete.
Instead, Sephiroth reads endless reports about Jenova -- Shinra's bungled reports that THOUGHT Jenova was the body of an Ancient. Since Sephiroth discovered that he was the product of the experiment to recreate a living Ancient, he does the math and thinks that he is an Ancient as well! WHICH IS NOT TRUE.
Armed with this false knowledge, furious that he was used all his life, Sephiroth started a mission to get revenge, supposedly because the 'traitors' (as he called Cloud) that rose up and made permanent establishments severed the treasured connection with the planet.
That is all bullshit. It's wild conjecture mixed with lies and mistakes. In truth, his mission is to get revenge on those who created him for their personal gain. Sephiroth's story is sad in the fact that he was never accorded the affection and attention every soul desires. His was not the creation of love but the creation of profit.
He is an animal, bred to lead Shinra to their 'Promised Land' so they can set up more Mako reactors to get rich. Sephiroth knew this. He hated the fact that he was a pawn, an expendable tool, used all his life to fatten Shinra's wallet -- and he also owes his very existence to Shinra, a bitter irony. This is why he was so vehement when he swore Shinra would never find the Promised Land. It wasn't because he wanted to protect it -- it's because he wanted to spite Shinra. He was operating entirely for his own goals.
THAT is his true motivation for going AWOL -- but he says differently, to cast himself in a righteous, noble light. It takes a bit of investigating to find the real reason, though. (I'll repeat it again, because this is the tricky part.) He has found an enemy for him to hate (the ones who opposed the 'Cetra' and which he accuses Cloud and the rest of humanity to be a part of) and goes on a mission to turn himself into a god of sorts so he can destroy them. It's important to remember that Sephiroth believes himself to be a Cetra himself and that Jenova is a Cetra as well! This is not true. That is where a lot of confusion comes from.
So, Sephiroth decides he's going to wipe out all the humans on the planet, starting with Cloud's hometown.
Needless to say, that was a bad idea. After Sephiroth destroyed the town, he goes to the Nibelheim reactor. There, Cloud and Zack catch up with him. Tifa got there ahead of them and had grabbed Sephiroth's sword (which he had tossed aside) and tried to attack him with it. Sephiroth grabbed the blade, wrested it from her and dealt her a savage blow across the chest. She fell down the stairs, mortally wounded. Sephiroth then entered the room where Jenova's body was held.
Zack runs after Sephiroth but quickly reemerges flying backwards. He's out for the count. Infuriated, having lost his dreams, his town, his family, his girl and now his friend, Cloud snatches up Zack's sword and goes after Sephiroth who, arrogant in his power, ignores him.
Bad move.
"Mom... Tifa... my town... give it back!" Cloud stabs Sephiroth through the gut, and for the first time in his life, Sephiroth finds himself mortally wounded. He collapses in the Jenova room. Cloud leaves and attends to Tifa, during which time Sephiroth comes out of the room with Jenova's head.
Sephiroth probably intended to take the whole body with him, but since he was wounded he could only take the head with him. Cloud once more takes Zack's sword and goes to finish off Sephiroth. He confronts the man on the catwalk above the boiling bowels of the Mako far below.
This is the famous scene where Sephiroth stabs Cloud through the shoulder and lifts him off the ground. Then Cloud manages to use that sword as leverage against him and tosses Sephiroth into the boiling Mako below before collapsing.
AT THIS POINT, SEPHIROTH IS PHYSICALLY DEAD. The body has not been destroyed, but Sephiroth is completely DEAD. I know, I know. You ask, then how can he possibly be dead if he shows up all throughout the game? Trust me, I'll explain it to you in a minute. Through sheer force of will alone, Sephiroth does not merge into the Lifestream like all souls should do. He sits there in the Lifestream, waiting, trying to find a way to exact his vengeance still.
One Layer Below Hell (FFS4)
When Shinra came to Nibelheim, they discovered the place trashed, only a handful of survivors left. They immediately knew what happened and immediately started to cover it up. They reconstructed the city in every detail they could salvage, probably by interrogating the survivors.
Then, in order to stop any mouths that might reveal that the most powerful man in the world just went AWOL, Hojo gathered up the survivors -- including Cloud and Zack -- and proceeded to subject them to the same experiment used to make SOLDIERS. We know that Zack passed this with flying colors -- Cloud, not so much. (Tifa, however, was rescued by her instructor, Zangan, who took her to Midgar for medical attention.)
Getting sumberged in Mako bombards a person with millions of memories and experiences of lives long since passed. In this veritable flood, it can be easy to lose one's identity. Think about it -- each of us are defined by our own unique experiences and memories. That is what makes us who we are.
Now imagine reaching back for a memory -- your last birthday, graduation, playing with friends and so on -- and instead of finding a familiar memory, you come up with a host of experiences not your own. How can you truly know who YOU are if there is nothing that you can recall to confirm your very own existence? In fact, how do you even know your own memories were your own and not someone elses? I want you to remember this, for it is vital to understanding what happened to Cloud and why he had such a hard time recalling the truth later on in the game.
This is what happened to Cloud -- but he was fighting it. He was half-aware of where he was, thanks to Zack rescuing them both from the Mako tanks. Maybe with time and treatment, he would've recovered fully.
However, Zack and Cloud were just outside Midgar when a Shinra army caught the two. Despite a valiant attempt by Zack, the SOLDIER is shot and killed. (Not without taking out half an army with him -- powerful testimony to the physical effects of J-cells on the host. And Zack was just a normal human -- imagine how much more powerful Sephiroth would be with the alien DNA actually woven into him!)
The Shinra soldiers decide that Cloud -- who is almost a mental vegetable -- is of no threat and chose to save the cost of a bullet by not killing him. Cloud, who is not entirely gone yet, crawls to his best friend, who gives him a last message before dying.
It was at this point that Cloud went a little insane. Please try to understand the trauma Cloud has just endured. He has lost his home, his family, his dreams, the girl he liked, had his memories ripped away from him and now he just lost his one and only friend.
I'd go crazy too, if all that happened to me.
Normally, as we see happening with the "clones" later on, Cloud should have fallen into a coma-like state and died. But the resilience of the human mind is not to be underestimated. Using the adventures told to him by Zack and mixing in his own experiences, Cloud created a world that his mind could adapt to. It was spun from half-truths and lies, but it worked. Ashamed of being weak and losing his dreams, of being unable to defend his family, his friends, even himself, Cloud decided to abandon that reality and made a new one where the story had changed, had made HIM the hero.
Cloud basically shoved aside all the crap that had happened to him and made a world that he wanted to live in, a world that he much preferred to the truth. This is where Cloud's line, "If everything's a dream, don't wake me," holds a lot of power. Cloud is living a dream -- literally! -- and has buried the truth deep in his mind, in a part of that spiky little head where only a part of him still remembers what truly happened. Cloud has just built a wall around that truth, but it is not forgotten.
That's also why we hear a lot of characters (including Sephiroth) randomly say, "Wake up!" throughout the game. The start of the game is when it's time for Cloud to stop living a dream and wake up from his illusion and start living in reality. Go back and play the game and suddenly all that random spouting of "Wake up!" will make a lot more sense. Pretty clever symbolism on the part of the writers, isn't it?
Because of the bombardment of memories, and the subsequent loss of identity, we also get to see when Cloud begins to lose his tenuous hold on this false identity that he created for himself in some places. Especially in the Temple of the Ancients, when he's laughing at the mural of Meteor. He says, "Cloud... I'm.... Cloud..." and it takes him a while to reestablish that role for himself. When the crises has passed, he doesn't think anything has happened, while the other two companions are stunned by what they witnessed. This is also why Tifa asks Cloud at Cosmo Canyon, "You really, really are...... you... right?" She has known Cloud most of her life but he doesn't seem like himself -- more like he's playing a role instead. You can see this as evidence that Cloud's constructed identity is a VERY delicate one -- holding back all those memories from the Mako is not an easy task.
Now keep in mind that a lot of what happened to Cloud at this moment is highly subjective. We never really get a full-out explanation of what he did and we're just given clues to piece the story together. Throughout the game, Cloud hears a mysterious voice that seems to know him pretty well, is asking him questions about his memories, asking him if he's alright and so forth. That voice is the part of his mind that is still wholly Cloud -- the Cloud that didn't make it into SOLDIER, that killed Sephiroth, that helplessly watched as his friend die. This other, whole identity eventually manifests as Cloud when he was just a young boy -- we see it during the scene when Cloud hands over the Black Materia, and later during the Lifestream scene with Tifa. When Cloud reconciles with that other part of him and the experiences he had during the 7 years he was living a lie, we finally get to see the whole, truly authentic Cloud.
But I'm skipping ahead.
This is where the story hits rock-bottom for our main character. After Cloud wakes up on the cliff -- now living in an illusion of his own that is entirely incompatible with reality -- he takes up Zack's sword and goes to Midgar. He forgets Zack even existed, since in his new "reality" he takes the place of Zack in several situations and there would never be a need for such a close and supportive role-model friend in this new dream. So, acting upon Zack's suggestion, Cloud works as a mercenary in Midgar for 5 years before Tifa finds him on the street and hires him to work for Avalanche.
Jenova Awakens (FFS5)
You are no doubt already familiar with the events of the game, so I will be brief here, explaining only what needs to be elaborated upon. After joining Avalanche, after meeting Aerith and after the destruction of Sector 7, the group decides it's up to them to rescue Aerith from Shinra.
While 'touring' the Shinra Headquarters, Cloud discovers a Mako tank that contains a deformed, headless body. This is the body of Jenova. Hojo had it moved to a more secure and convenient location after the Nibelheim incident. The body is still inert -- please refer back to my explanation in section (FFS1) to review what I said about the unique properties of Jenova if you do not remember.
Later, the entire group is captured -- the would-be rescuers are now in the same boat as the person they tried to rescue in the first place.
Now here is where things get scary.
During the night, something kills nearly everyone in the building. Blood is everywhere and, most importantly, the tank that held Jenova's body was torn to shreds -- almost as if something came out of the tank!
The body of Jenova is gone and yet surivors say that Sephiroth was the one that killed everyone. And it's also Sephiroth's sword that is sticking from the back of President Shinra. So what gives?
THIS IS WHERE PEOPLE GET CONFUSED. So pay attention.
Now, remember what I said about the cells of Jenova's body? That they were individually aware but needed a single mind or conciousness to control them in unified action? Think of the cells as computers; they all have a basic programming they will run but will do nothing unless told to. All one has to do is give energy to the cells, put in the programming you want, then tell them to execute it.
Recall that Sephiroth's soul/mind/whathaveyou is sitting in the Lifestream, still seeking a way to exact his revenge against the world and all of humanity. Well, he discovered how to "recharge and reprogram" the cells of Jenova's body. It wasn't exactly hard for him to do since Jenova was sitting in a tank of Mako.
So after Sephiroth had taken control of Jenova's body, he made it shapeshift to look like him! THIS is what confuses so many people! How can Sephiroth be dead if we see him throughout the game? The answer is simple -- the Sephiroth you see walking around, the one you encounter on the ship to Junon? That isn't Sephiroth's real body. His real body has been washed up by the flow of Mako to the Northern Crater. The one you see throughout the game is actually the body of Jenova shapeshifted to look like him.
So all the times you see Sephiroth appear and a Jenova battle comes immediately afterward, that body you see is actually a small piece of Jenova. He drops a random piece of Jenova for you to fight and then zooms away. The Sephiroth that came out of nowhere and stabbed Aerith? That was actually a part of Jenova's body morphed to look like him. Jenova -- not Sephiroth -- is a puppet, jerking to the strings that Sephiroth is pulling. Only with Jenova's body was Sephiroth's soul able to do this, thanks to the unique nature of the cells.
NOW, it is also important to remember that, when you get to the temple of the Ancients, and you touch the pool for a 'story' to be told to you by the planet and a ghostly image of Sephiroth arrives -- THAT is the real soul of Sephiroth. Since the 'story' is being told in the Lifestream, and since his soul is in the Lifestream, that was Sephiroth actually talking to the characters in the Lifestream.
This is why I always find FF7 to be rather scary -- While the characters were innocently sleeping through the night, an alien appeared to come back to life, shapeshifted into the form of a dead man, and then proceeded to kill everyone in the building. This also inadvertently opened all the cells to the prison doors holding the characters. The cause of what had "rescued" them could just as easily have slaughtered them in the night. Only by some twist of fate and luck were they not discovered.
If that isn't scary shit, I don't know what is.
Eventually, the group manages to escape Midgar and decide to chase Sephiroth and thwart whatever scheme he has in mind. Cloud goes simply to get revenge. Gotta love simple motivations!
Kalm Lies (FFS6)
Since I see no need to recap every event in the game, I will merely skip through the various quests and encounters and land upon the events that are pertinent to explaining the plot.
I'll make a brief mention of what happens in Kalm since this one flashback is what makes people so confused. Since the group is unsatisfied with Cloud's half-answers throughout the game so far (as are the players, as I would imagine) Cloud decides to explain things to them.
Enter the famous Kalm flashback. In this story, Cloud tells the group that he -- a SOLDIER -- accompanied Sephiroth to Nibelheim.
Now I want to take a moment and point out how damn clever the writers were. In the beginning of the flashback, there is Cloud and Sephiroth and a couple of Shinra grunts sitting in the back of the truck. Now, because of my explanations earlier, we KNOW that Cloud is not a SOLDIER, and we know that he wasn't very talkative. The person that is walking around and acting all chatty is probably Zack.
But notice that 'Cloud' asks one of the Shinra grunts if he's okay, and then mentions that he -- Cloud -- never gets motion sickness.
As we all know, Cloud gets some serious motion sickness, as revealed when talking to Yuffie on the Highwind later on. So that can only mean one thing -- that grunt soldier is actually the real Cloud!
It makes sense too that, for the purpose of this warped flashback, Cloud would picture himself saying that he never gets motion sickness. In Cloud's idealized image of what a hero should be, motion sickness would be very un-heroic quality that he would want to divorce himself from. So we can see that Cloud is still playing the illusionary role of what he THINKS a hero should be. He's denying everything about himself that is perfectly human in favor of an idyllic image of herodom that he's always wanted to become. This also explains why he acts so stiffly and cold to others at the beginning of the game -- in his mind, a hero should be cool, aloof, not care about anyone, and always give off a sense of deadly power. This attitude crumbles through the course of the game as he eventually drops the act to focus on more important things.
Isn't it fun to find out these interesting little things sprinkled throughout the game?
The great majority of this Kalm flashback is blatant lies. There are a LOT of holes in there and a lot of discontinuities, but you can really only pick up on them after you've played the game a few times -- like me.
Again, interesting to note -- along with Tifa, the real SOLDIER (Zack, but in this flashback, Cloud put himself in his friend's role) and Sephiroth, only two normal Shinra grunts went with them. One of them is actually Cloud, who is still masking his identity. After the bridge collapses to Mt. Nibel, one of those grunts is lost -- Cloud is the one who survives. When Sephiroth asks the grunt to keep Tifa out of the reactor, that is Cloud blocking her way.
He was always within arms-reach of her and never said a word and she was none the wiser. Spooky, huh?
After the flashback, Tifa seems quiet and uncertain. SHE knows that something isn't right about Cloud. Cloud says that he was there at Nibelheim five years ago -- yet Tifa hasn't seen him in seven years! (Remember, Cloud was a Shinra grunt for two years before going back to Nibelheim, and then he was a lab experiment for five years before meeting Tifa in the slums.) For Tifa, he shouldn't have been there at all, and the story he told was wrong -- Sephiroth did come, and a SOLDIER was sent with him, but it wasn't Cloud -- it was Zack.
As Tifa says later on, "I felt there was something strange about the things you talked about. All the things you didn't know that you should. And other things you shouldn't know that you did..."
For her, Cloud shouldn't know about the incident at Nibelheim, yet he does. He should remember his promise to her, but he forgot. You can see why Tifa was confused, wondering why both their versions of the story were wildly incompatible. As we now know, Cloud WAS there, he just wasn't in the star role, and since he kept his identity hidden, Tifa never knew he was there. That's why their stories didn't match.
The Clones (FFS7)
Since we see the clones all over the place, I can't really put them in a chronological order. Everything here has been pretty much explained save for these guys.
What are the clones?
Well, after Nibelheim had been destroyed, Shinra realized it had to be covered up. So they rebuilt the town and rounded up the survivors -- 12 in all -- to be turned into Sephiroth "clones".
Note that "clones" is a really bad word to describe them. As Cloud says, "Hojo's plan to clone Sephiroth wasn't that difficult. It was just the same procedure they use when creating members of SOLDIER." Which means dunking them in Mako and injecting them with J-cells.
The only difference being that with SOLDIER there is some kind of screening process to ensure that the people that undergo the procedure will come out super-improved and powerful, as with Zack. People that fail that test -- like Cloud -- become what are called the "clones". Mindless, broken things, only shadows of their former selves.
Now let's get to the big questions.
Does Sephiroth control the clones? The answer is no -- he doesn't. But he CAN manipulate them to a degree. All the clones were made to seek out Sephiroth, the idea being to follow them to the one Shinra wanted to find. Recall that because each J-cell is a limited but independent entity in its own right, all the cells will regroup if they are ever scattered. This is what makes Jenova so hard to kill -- cut it up into as many pieces as you like, they'll just keep coming back together, like the T-1000 from Terminator 2.
The clones did exactly jack-squat until Sephiroth started controlling Jenova's body. The cells that were simply dormant and inert were suddenly active. With the parent body now "alive" and active, the call went out to all the cells to regroup -- Hojo called this phenomena Reunion. That is when all the clones started becoming active. They all started travelling to wherever Sephiroth (which is really just Jenova's dead body morphed to look like him) was. That is why the characters find the clones along their journey -- both of them are following Sephiroth.
Now the question is, Was Sephiroth truly manipulating Cloud and Cloud's memories through the J-cells?
The answer is a resounding NO, as I'll explain in the next section.
Cloud's Story and the Lifestream (FFS8)
Remember what I said in (FFS4) about the flood of memories and how they made Cloud question his own identity? Well, we're going to take a deeper look into what happened.
Cloud mixed up truth with dream and made an identity for himself that wasn't real, but instead was something he'd always wanted to be. This puts his hold on reality to be very tenuous at best.
Suddenly, Sephiroth comes in during the 're-visit' of the Kalm Flashback and says that Cloud does not exist. That once, perhaps, there may have been a boy named Cloud but the man standing in front of him was just an experiment. However, because of the mental stunt Cloud's brain pulled to prevent him from going crazy and catatonic, he has divorced himself from the knowledge that would easily refute the crap that Sephiroth is spouting. Sephiroth also puts Tifa's testimony into doubt by saying that memories of Cloud were planted in her mind by the J-cells and were just as fake as Cloud was.
What Sephiroth is basically doing is bluffing about what J-cells can do. For example, he's bluffing on the idea that J-cells can plant false memories in Tifa. We know this isn't true -- or at the very least, we don't have any information that would support such a claim since we know that Tifa's memories are NOT made up. It's going out on a limb on Sephiroth's part because he can't be sure it'll work -- but in this case it did. His mixture of truth and lies made Cloud doubt who he really was.
Thus, Cloud begins to doubt if his motives are truly his own. He begins to think that he really is nothing more than a puppet. He has memories... but as we know by now, those memories are heavily edited and any others that would prove Sephiroth wrong have been deeply buried in his mind. In fact, he starts to believe in these lies and doubt himself so much that he actually starts to do things he believes he has no control over.
Like handing the Black Materia over to Sephiroth, like beating up Aerith, like trying to kill Aerith under the Forbidden City. Since for Cloud dream has become just as powerful as reality, all Sephiroth had to do was to subtly change that false role Cloud had been playing. Cloud is an actor, playing a role not his own -- Sephiroth was simply changing the script to suit his needs.
Sephiroth took a little bit of truth -- for example, showing Cloud the picture the boy took at Nibelheim, a picture where Cloud is absent -- to try and "prove" that Cloud wasn't there and then mixed in a bit of bullshit ("Five years ago you were... ...constructed by Hojo, piece by piece, right after Nibelheim was burnt. A puppet made up of vibrant Jenova cells, her knowledge, and the power of the Mako. An incomplete Sephiroth-clone. Not even given a number. ...That is your reality.") to make Cloud doubt everything he thought he knew. And it worked! Sephiroth is truly a master-genius in mind fuckery. We know, however, that Cloud wouldn't be in the picture, but he was at Nibelheim. Just because he wasn't in the picture doesn't mean he couldn't have been at Nibelheim. Cloud, on the other hand, believing he was the SOLDIER all along, doesn't know that.
But as the game goes on, we keep seeing and hearing this 'voice' talking to Cloud that is actually the part of Cloud that remembers what really happened -- this TRUE identity manifests itself as Cloud when he was young. That is why when Cloud hands the BM to Sephiroth, you see the ghostly image of a younger Cloud appearing and shouting things like he doesn't have to do that, he is stronger than this. That is the REAL Cloud (not the made-up living dream Cloud) that is saying "Sephiroth is a god damned liar" and knows better but since Cloud has blocked that part of his mind with a wall of wish-fulfillment.... he doesn't know better. So he basically allows himself to believe that he's nothing but what Sephiroth says he is -- a puppet.
Cloud admits this when explaining to the group after the Lifestream scene. "It has nothing to do with Jenova Reunion. But weak people...... like me, get lost in the whole thing. The combination of Jenova cells, Sephiroth's strong will and my own weakness are what created me."
It's right there in the game -- he wasn't being controlled by Sephiroth, but Sephiroth did know what kind of fucked up reality Cloud had made for himself, and so he preyed upon those holes and weaknesses to make Cloud do what he wanted. Not once did Sephiroth ever make Cloud do something through mind-control or the J-cells. He just used Cloud's weakness against himself. The J-cells, however, WERE 'pulling' Cloud toward Sephiroth, but they did not make him a slave to Sephiroth's will.
Only afterwards, when Cloud and Tifa get dumped into the Lifestream, does this become clear. Only for the last disc do we actually get to see the true and authentic Cloud -- not the one that thought he was a SOLDIER, but the real Cloud. It's a shame how we don't get to see very much of this character.
However, this revelation has come too late and Sephiroth has already summoned Meteor.
And so the big question comes: If Cloud is such a weak person, then why didn't he end up like the clones? How did he end up becoming like someone from SOLDIER instead?
A very good question! We know that Cloud wasn't accepted into SOLDIER because he would've reacted negatively to the J-cells, when the 'successful' SOLDIERs like Zack simply adapt and improve to the cells. So how does Cloud eventually end up just like his buddy after all that?
To find the answer, look to the theme of the game: Friendship.
Through the Power of Friendship; through the support and diligence of Tifa, Cid, Barret, Red, Aerith, Cait Sith and even Vincent -- Cloud managed to pull through. Because of the stories told to him by Zack, Cloud could make a reality for himself that would allow him to keep an identity instead of just losing his mind entirely. Because of Tifa's perseverance, he managed to piece his own identity back together again and finally came to know himself.
After five long years, Cloud woke up from the dream he'd made to forget his own failures and weaknesses. And he discovered that he was strong. In all his weakness and failure, in all his self-delusion and hatred, he found true strength. So, against all odds, he pulled through what had driven countless others into madness and death.
Good thing he has a lot of friends!
Conclusion (FFS9)
So, now that Cloud's entire complicated story is out of the way, let's cover some of the other things, shall we?
One of the big confusions is why Diamond Weapon went after Midgar and why Sapphire Weapon tried to destroy Junon. Red's grandfather suggests that since the Weapons are meant to destroy anything that is harmful to the planet, it's widely believed that the attacks on the cities were meant to wipe out massive human populations -- that humans themselves were considered dangerous to the planet.
However, there is a much better reason, and one that makes much more sense. After all, if the planet wanted to wipe out humanity, why didn't it just let Jenova wipe the earth clean of all humans? See, it doesn't make sense, does it?
Recall from the very first section that the Planet is still trying to heal the massive wound that is the Northern Crater. The entire Northern Continent is a barren icy wasteland, though there are signs that it once flourished with life. Every drop of Mako is being used to try and heal that wound.
Now, what do Mako reactors do?
They take Mako out of the Lifestream circulation! That energy does not fulfill it's intended purpose. Recall also that Ifalna said that the Planet is very still, and is watching the situation very closely.
So, when Jenova (looking like Sephiroth) started walking around again, the Planet went into action. It needed every last drop of energy it could get -- but there are those cities with their reactors drawing away that much needed strength. In desperation, the Planet sends the two Weapons after Junon and Midgar -- cities with very dense populations and a LOT of Mako reactors -- to destroy the reactors and thus stop the drain on the Planet's strength. Only through the use of the Sister Ray is this plan thwarted. It saved plenty of human lives, but it also ensured that the Planet would continue to weaken. That's why Ultima Weapon runs around hovering over cities in threat of destroying them.
Another big question that goes around the forums is this: Did Aerith know she was going to die?
That, I honestly cannot answer. Red's grandfather says that Holy is activated when a soul reaches the Planet asking for help. We know that a soul reaches the Planet when a person dies. So Aerith could not have called Holy unless she died. The real question is, did she know that was what had to be done? In truth, we'll never really know. I think that perhaps she did know what had to be done, but that's just me. Even her last words to Cloud in a dream seem ominous...
"Then, I'll be going now. I'll come back when it's all over."
And as we see at the end of the final cutscene, that's exactly what she did.
FAQs (FFS10)
Here is a list of Frequently Asked Questions. This part will be updated as questions are asked that was not covered in the main post.
1. What was Jenova's goal?
We'll never know. There is no record of what Jenova's entire intent might have been. All we have to go on is Sephiroth's twisted view of the world, and that is highly questionable.
2. Okay, so what was Sephiroth's goal?
His goal is somewhat complicated to explain. Remember that he thinks he is an Ancient and that Jenova was an Ancient as well. His goal would have to be, in a word, vengeance. All of the events in the game was done, if you recall, so that Sephiroth may get the Black Materia and use it to create a wound so great in the planet that all of the Lifestream would be in one place at one time, likely killing the planet in the process. Sephiroth intended to use that concentrated power to become a being so powerful as to be godlike and thus create a haven where there are no 'humans' that he STILL BELIEVES killed the Cetra. His warped view of the world is quite disturbing, but there you have it.
3. So why use Jenova's body?
Because he could not interact with the living world without it. Sephiroth was sitting in the Lifestream, true -- but he couldn't get the Black Materia or summon Meteor. He couldn't achieve his plan. To that end, he needed to hijack Jenova's dormant body, manipulate his pursuers into giving him the BM, and then become a god-like entity. He simply used Jenova's body as a tool to further his own ends -- which he came damned close to accomplishing. In fact, the second time the characters go to the Northern Crater and Cloud confronts him, Sephiroth says, "This is the end of this body's usefulness."
He was talking about Jenova's body he made morph into his own form -- it isn't an ambiguous statement. He had accomplished all that he had set out to do and therefore no longer needs Jenova's body any longer.
4. How do you know Jenova is a shape-shifter?
Sephiroth says it himself during the cutscene with Cloud and Tifa in the Crater.
Sephiroth: The ability to change one's looks, voice, and words, is the power of Jenova.
In other words, shape-shifting. :dave: Even greater evidence: First time in the North Crater, remember when you get to choose to hand the Black Materia over to someone for safe keeping after getting it back from Sephiroth? Of course you do. Now, remember when Tifa comes running up to that person and saying that Cloud is in trouble and needs help, and that person goes dashing off? You do! Good.
Then remember that Tifa suddenly turned into Sephiroth? :dave: Well, there you have it. That was the body of Jenova shape-shifting from one form to another, all controlled by Sephiroth.
5. Do you have a life?
No.
6. Could Aerith or another Cetra do what Sephiroth did with Jenova's body?
No -- there's only the one alien shapeshifting body on the planet! Technically, I suppose Aerith could take control of Jenova's body and shape-shift it to look like herself. But since Sephiroth got to the body first, she can't. I can only assume there is some kind of rapport between Sephiroth and Jenova's body, since the two share the same DNA in some slim manner, which would prevent Aerith wrenching away control from Sephiroth after she had died. And since the body was destroyed, there is no way to gain any more of those kinds of cells -- which we should all be thankful for! However, this does not mean that Aerith cannot manifest in some way.
7. So how could Aerith manifest without using Jenova's body?
I have no idea. The same way ghosts do, I should imagine. Or maybe she uses a spell involving cheese and a paper cup, for all I know. There's really no evidence in the games that explains how she can, but in both the game and the movie, we see that she can make herself appear and can interact with the living world. All I can tell you is that she can do it. I've no other information other than that. Your speculation is as good as mine.
8. What is the voice that Cloud keeps hearing throughout the game?
That is the subconscious self that Cloud has buried deep in his mind in order to forget what really happened. While constructing a new identity for himself, he had to largely get rid of the first one -- so he tucked it into a deep, dark corner and put a wall around it. That hidden identity is the real Cloud -- the one that remembers everything that happened, the one that has weaknesses and failures. It isn't content to just kick back in the psyche and let Cloud bumble along, though -- this hidden identity speaks to Cloud and tries to get him to remember what happend. It tries to make him wake up from the living dream Cloud is leading.
9. Did you get all this information from the game?
Yes. The only part I didn't get from the game was the game theme of friendship itself -- that I got from the extensive interviews of Advent Children. I even provided quotes when necessary to show you exactly what tipped me off to the whole underlying story. I've been piecing this all together over the course of about 7 years, and every time I play the game I find new things that I'm amazed I missed the first time around. It's a well-thought out story. Nothing is said without a double purpose.
10. How do you know that Jenova wasn't controlling Sephiroth?
A good question. A lot of people seem to think Jenova was really pulling the strings all along. If this is so, I ask you this: If Jenova could control the J-cells at any time, why didn't it just control all the SOLDIERs and have them slaughter everything? Why didn't it just "reunify" right away when it started to be separated? There are so many instances where Jenova could have acted and didn't. And trust me, Jenova would have been MUCH harder to kill than Sephiroth. How do you kills something that has no heart, no lungs, no brain?
Sephiroth was never being controlled. If anything, Jenova was the one being controlled by Sephiroth -- its dead body at least. And we know that Jenova's mind/spirit is dead because if it WASN'T then there would be no Gaia to speak of -- Jenova would've continued on it's quest to eliminate all of humanity, and since that hasn't happened we know that Jenova is dead. Only the body hasn't been destroyed.
So, I hope this clears up any and all questions about the plot of Final Fantasy VII! It's a truly masterful plot with well-thought out characters and setting. It only suffers from a lack of good story-telling. It can be very easy to miss the subtle hints and things that permeate the game. Hopefully, this post will have cleared up any confusion on the matter and you can now enjoy the game with a better idea of what's going on and appreciate the intricacy all the more.
If this post helped you and FF7 suddenly makes sense to you now, rep it! Just so I know it made a difference!
Thank you!
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Thank you Garland! Makes all that hard work so very worthwhile. I'm glad it changed your mind about Cloud -- a lot of people get fed up with him and it just makes me giddily happy to know it made his character more understandable now. 
GOD that is hilarious.
Good job. 
Thank you Stoic, Baron! 
Thank you also, I'm very happy you approve! 
