Playing with words

Interlude

CoD- Denzel’s worry about money is a natural result of what he has been through on the street

 

Symbiosis

CoT- Origin of Strife’s delivery service. Also refers to Marlene’s original role as 7^th Heaven’s waitress. 

DoC- Shalua Rui is one of the scientists standing in line- well spotted Alinalotus!
 

 

Winter Blaze

CoT- Corel wine was something Barret showed them how to make.

CC- Cloud is on time when he isn’t screwed up- and always too late when he is.

BC- Dinne is named as Nanaki’s mate, although why Bugenhagen is completely unaware of this in the game is a mystery. Ah, ret-conning.

FFVII- Cid will ask Cloud if they can play the snowboarding game when you go to the Golden Saucer while he is in your battle party. IIRC, Tifa does this as well. It’s probably because they are the only two you get to control as the “main character” other than Cloud. But hey, I can abuse this fact to authenticate my story, hehe.

Yuffie mentions tranquilizers as a way to avoid the discomfort of motion sickness in the game. They usually are used to cure the “Berserk” status.

Tifa sees Cloud’s memories when they are pitched into the Lifestream in Mideel. This is when she helps put his fractured mind back together, by reinforcing what he remembers with what she remembers.

The flashback sequence is meant to be similar to the movie where Cloud thinks of what is most precious to him. But something similar was in “Taking off Masks,” so I referred it, just in case.
 

 

Penance

 DoC- “Geostigma detected” flashes on the screen when Deepground soldiers are capturing “pure” civilians to abduct.

CoT- Tifa and Cloud’s “sins”: the inability to replace lives.

Gysahl greens are the ideal chocobo pacifier in the game, cheap and long lasting. You can only buy them at Chocobo farm.

FFVII- Tifa assumes her victory pose after cleaning the church.

Elixirs restore full HP and MP, and Remedies cure all status ailments.

The original defeat of Sephiroth is referred to as “The Jenova War” by Reeve in DoC, so that is what I went with here.

Cloud’s belongings are the ones that were in the church in AC.
 

 

Triangles and Resolutions

FFVII- The love triangle and date reference should be obvious.

The megaphone was Cait Sith’s weapon in the game- he ordered his robot moogle to beat up the enemy with it. However, the moogle has been removed in AC due to animation difficulties. And since you only control Cait in the “sneaking around” parts of DoC, shouting orders and riding around on a big robot moogle would not be helpful.

Reeve blackmailed the Avalanche group into letting Cait Sith stay (despite revealing himself as the traitor) by taking Marlene in the game. So he, too, cared for Marlene for a short time.

Japanese culture reference- Oosouji (Housecleaning) is usually done at New Year.

DoC- WRO headquarters has to be close enough to Edge for Shalua to be able to carry an unconscious Vincent between them. The river in the movie of "future Midgar" looks different from the game map though. Confusing? Yes.

CoB- Barret’s commitment to finding oil, leaving Marlene with Cloud and Tifa, being helpless to save a girl stricken with Geostigma, and destroying nests of monsters (or the ceiling of Cid’s hanger) to relieve frustrations.

CoT- Marlene sleeps with Tifa, enjoys being the center of things at 7^th Heaven.

Mee goreng is actually what they call fried noodles in Malaysia and Indonesia.

FF7 Reminiscence- Barret has a present for the kids, and asks Cloud to deliver it.
 

 

Special Delivery

FFVII- Limit Breaks- only Tifa can chain hers, which makes her absolutely kick-ass in your party if you are good at timing her slots. Cid’s final limit is called “Highwind,” and as described, he just gets the airship to hit the enemy with missiles. Great Gospel is the name of Aeris’ final limit as well, and since she uses it to heal Cloud of his Stigma there, I thought it was really the most apt name for the church.

CoB- Cid calls Nanaki “Red,” although he has to know perfectly well what his real name is. So here is my explanation.

The obvious “Miss Cloud” reference from the game.

DoC- Yuffie has been drafted into helping Reeve in his intelligence division. Vincent is really reluctant to help out though, until his hand is really forced.

 The “hand reaching out” scene in the game and movie, but no Aeris, hehe.

FF7 Reminiscence- Vincent and Cloud end their conversation in a similar way.

The date was chosen for a huge number of reasons. It’s a Sunday. It is a lucky date according to both Chinese and Japanese calendars. It is also the date of the full moon. And finally, I figured it would give me enough time to write the chapter after my trip.
 

 

Promises

FFVII (and AC)-The hand reaching out scene

 The Nibelheim promise scene, obviously

The final scene in AC, where Aeris and Zack wish Cloud well from the doorway

Japanese culture reference: spring is the time of new beginnings here. The school year for example, starts in April. So I thought marriage in spring would be most appropriate.
 

 

Memories

FFVII- Mideel is the place where Cloud was a vegetable for part of the game, and Tifa cared for him. They get dumped into the Lifestream there and she helps him find his true identity through his memories then.

The hot tub scene with Mukki in the Honeybee Inn before he becomes Miss Cloud, bubby.

I referred back to Aftermath at the end of the surf scene.

 Minor dig at Aeris with the floral scent thing. hehe

CC- Tifa emails Zack, saying she wants to ask him something about SOLDIERs. She is also visibly disappointed to see that Cloud is not the 1^st class sent to Nibelheim. And isn’t that an awful outfit she wears?

Cloud echoes Tifa’s lines from their confrontation in AC

CoT- silly conversations are one of the markers of their relationship when it is healthy
 

 

A Taste of Home

FFVII- The Sephiroth-loses-it scene from the original game (and again in CC) should be obvious, but they also go back to Nibelheim in the game and in CoT. They regret this in both cases, hating the memories it stirs.

The mistakes Shinra made in rebuilding Nibelheim are highlighted in the pictures from FF7 Ultimania

 Reminiscence- Yuffie gives Cloud a “Temporarily Closed” sign.
 

 

Level Up

DoC- the TV channel is the same as the one being broadcast in Vincent’s room. The energy crisis also would not have been sparked if Deepground had not routed all the excess Mako to Reactor 0 for Omega Weapon

Reminiscence- Cloud rarely answers the phone even when Cid calls.

The ending of the Loz fight from AC should be obvious. I loved writing this scene. The scenes where Cloud speaks to Rufus were also meant to echo the one in AC.

Yuna and Shinra talk about “a city full of lights, one that never sleeps” in FFX-2. More about the connection between the two FFs can be found online. 
 

 

Preludes to War

FFVII- Barret's old hometown, Corel, is what the Gold Saucer is built over. You also meet Cait here in the original game- and he betrays you here, too.

CoD- The seeds of Denzel’s desire to be a WRO soldier and fight are hinted at here, with his morose musings on his uselessness.

BC- Shalua says she was in AVALANCHE and is looking for the sister the Turks took away to be in SOLDIER in Chapter 22. Dinne is introduced and the Turks infiltrate Cosmo Canyon in search of AVALANCHE in Chapter 18.

CC- Cissnei is the female Turk with the Shuriken in the final scene- she was in love with Zack herself, and was really conflicted when she was sent to bring him in after he escaped from Hojo's lab with Cloud. 

Most references are from DoC- Shelke says the Lifestream has started flowing normally again in the final FMV, so I assumed that having it not flow properly would cut off Aeris from the church

Yuffie is really upset by Shalua’s incapacitation, implying that they were friends before the events of DoC.

“1200 people in Junon vanished without a single trace” according to Reeve- but Vincent had seen a report that “only 20 or 30 people went missing,” andhe seems really out of the loop (everybody else is in the attack force except Nanaki), so with all the Lucrecia flashbacks, I assumed he'd gone into coffin/grotto brooding mode over his sins.

Shalua is confused that “500 people still living [in Edge]” are missing when she meets up with Vincent there, so I had the choice to make them Deepground fodder or have Cloud and Co. save them in the nick of time. A little cheesy, maybe, but I wanted to show Cloud in battle again, as the leader of a pack instead of a lone wolf, so I wrote it this way.

Yuffie mentions Wutai being attacked by Deepground and saved by the defense her father and the Wusheng put up when Vincent chats with her on the Shera.

Reeve explains how they “came across some of Scarlet’s old files” that fill in some background info on Deepground, and you have to search Shinra Manor for files later in the game. Yuffie is also conveniently "poking around in Nibelheim" in time to rescue Vincent from Rosso, and since she's in charge of WRO intelligence, I thought it would be logical that it would be the source of those files. With Hojo's experiments on Cloud and Zack being in the manor in the original game (and CC) it also made me think that Deepground experiments could likely have been conducted there as well.

Weiss/Hojo's speech in DoC is quite nasty, which I think would motivate anybody to fight harder against someone so loathsome.

Cloud has two birthdays: one in the game booklet that comes with FFVII (August 19^th), and then Square decided to give him a new one that has been reprinted in pretty much everything else (August 11^th). So here’s my explanation of Square’s little goof. No, Zack has never been given an official birthday.

The one thing I couldn’t ret-con was the way people either dissolve into spirit energy upon death (Grimoire Valentine, Kadaj) or leave bodies (Aeris, Zack, Shalua, Bugenhagen) in the compilation. Huh? Consistency? Hello?

 

Full Circle

CC and FFVII’s train scenes are what helped kick off this project in the first place- I couldn't get over how Cloud had actually duplicated so many of Zack's experiences in a creepy way. So this was a non-creepy, fade to ordinary way to get him to retrace those steps again.

CC- Zack tells Cloud that he is the proof of his existence just before he dies.

CoT/CoD- Edge was initially built with parts cannibalized from Midgar
 
FFVII and AC- the lushly overgrown Midgar in the future probably had a small hand from our flower girl, I think.

FFVII- Barret's "Can't get offa this train we're on!" motto is something Cloud repeats after he realizes who he really is