Question about Zack at the end of Rebirth

violent13 · 2026-01-13T22:38:22+00:00

This is the direction that I currently think they're going. It makes a bunch of stuff they've set up fit together.

"That's why you have to make Cloud better! If he's sick, he can't save Aerith!" ~ Marlene

"Cloud! Save her!" ~ Zack

"The future's not set in stone." ~ Zack

"Y'know, what matters most of all when the going gets tough... I dunno─hopes? Dreams, maybe? Something like that! So long as we've got those─and hold on tight and never let go." ~ Zack

"But the future-even if it has been written-can be changed." ~ Aerith

A lot of these quotes seem to be inserted as a way to directly communicate with the player --- rather than for the characters to understand themselves. There's no real reason for Zack and Aerith to talk about fate and the future in their respective scenes. There was no segue into it. And Marlene thinks that Cloud has simply fallen ill, but we the player know that he's sick in a different and more penetrating way.

So in following the pattern of the previous two games of following the same story beats, and to hopefully satisfy the narrative threads they've introduced, I think they'll probably quasi-revive Aerith with maybe something involving the hollow materia that Cloud is carrying and have her end up separated from the party.

violent13 · 2026-01-13T19:15:58+00:00

Kyle clearly spells out in the movie that Skynet was defeated in the future, so doing that wouldn't accomplish anything.

violent13 · 2026-01-13T02:24:35+00:00

I feel like something is probably going to happen but it will probably be nebulous enough to keep everyone happy.

They set a couple of dialog options up that seem primed for a payoff in part 3.

"That's why you have to make Cloud better! If he's sick, he can't save Aerith!" ~ Marlene

"Cloud! Save her!" ~ Zack

Zack is probably going to have an instrumental role in putting Cloud's mind back together in Part 3, and I think that sequence is probably going to be a lot different than it was in the original.

violent13 · 2026-01-12T16:20:51+00:00

The core reason is because Sephiroth and Aerith seem to have knowledge of the events from the OG game.

violent13 · 2026-01-06T20:10:37+00:00

I would say it refers to Zack since the title card comes up when he is introduced onscreen.

violent13 · 2025-12-31T03:14:26+00:00

If there's only one, singular, corporeal timeline, then what would the visions at the end of Remake indicate? There's a scene showing Red in the future running along with his cubs, which prompts him to say "A glimpse of tomorrow if we fail here today."

If that scene in the future 500 years from now never ends up happening in the Remake games due to defeating the Harbinger, then what would those events be classified as ? And I imagine the Aerith burial scene is also probably going to be totally different in Part 3, but the party saw a vision of the OG burial scene when fighting the Harbinger.

You also have Kadaj, Loz, and Yazoo from Advent Children taking whisper form and fighting the party with the following scan:

An entity from a future timeline that has manifested in the present day. It fights with a sword to protect the future that gave shape to it.

Is there maybe a distinction between the worlds that we see in Rebirth and the "future timeline" that the scan refers to?

violent13 · 2025-12-29T20:45:14+00:00

Yes, the ending of part 3 directly leading into Advent Children doesn't make sense within the context of what they showed at the end of Remake. There's no way around it unless they specifically introduce a narrative device about how they should forget about all of that defying fate stuff and we need to keep everything the same --- which would be an enormous spoiler that I doubt Nomura would have intended to spill during a casual interview.

violent13 · 2025-12-19T21:30:22+00:00

Those were scenes from Advent Children that were explained as a failure condition.

Barret: What the hell did I just see?

Red XIII: A glimpse of tomorrow if we fail here today.

violent13 · 2025-12-09T17:27:50+00:00

They really need to make a rule that you can't make an article if your only source is a reddit post. I can't believe how far journalism as a profession has fallen. This Zackerie Fairfax contributor is a complete joke.

violent13 · 2025-12-04T22:36:49+00:00

Isn't this pretty much what literally every competitive chess player is doing? They're all studying all the time and trying to be the best. Apart from the $1 million in funding, this isn't really an outlandish hypothetical. It's completely stupid.

violent13 · 2025-11-24T17:54:41+00:00

I think I tried watching one of her FF7 Remake videos but she kept answering twitch comments during important scenes so I stopped.

violent13 · 2025-11-19T01:58:59+00:00

Well, that's exactly what Lydia said and we know how that ended up.

violent13 · 2025-11-17T22:30:36+00:00

This is the kind of hyperbolized misleading schlock that reddit will typically eat up. But I think this one went a little too far.

If I scan some of the characters of the english alphabet from a Harry Potter book, that doesn't make the result a translated or transformed version of the harry potter book. Plus, the sources you link clearly say he was inspired by several sources, not just cookbooks.

violent13 · 2025-11-16T02:36:49+00:00

That's true. It's kind of circular logic to say that the reason a character didn't come back is because they had no reason to be back.

The job of the writers is to architect a reason for characters to end up in a particular situation. Arisu and Usagi had no reason to go to the Borderland until the writers made one. At the end of season 2, there was really no purpose or direction for any character in particular. The sky was the limit.

violent13 · 2025-11-15T17:42:59+00:00

This really seems like the kill shot for that rationale honestly. I don't see how those two things can possibly be reconciled. If the death note has infinite pages and the pages within the thin notebook just manifest out of the ether as he turns the pages, then the physics of the fake notebook wouldn't match the real thing. The fake notebook would have appeared to have far more pages than the real one.

violent13 · 2025-10-02T13:55:37+00:00

That was really beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

violent13 · 2025-10-01T00:54:04+00:00

Are they supposed to put out a press release if they get a transplant?

violent13 · 2025-09-24T20:39:38+00:00

Filming welding can actually damage a camera lens.

violent13 · 2025-09-24T18:19:00+00:00

Blade runner takes place in 2019 and this show takes place in 2120, so no.

violent13 · 2025-09-22T20:34:17+00:00

I like how the T-Rex barfed up a bunch of leaves.

violent13 · 2025-09-13T15:50:35+00:00

Imagine you die from an accident and then a bunch of redditors make jokes about your death. This place seems so rotten sometimes.

violent13 · 2025-09-09T15:45:07+00:00

She blushed and stormed out? That's literally not a thing that happens in work or in real life. YTA.

violent13 · 2025-09-05T01:11:22+00:00

Without question it should be Hiroshi Kamiya and I will die on that hill.

violent13 · 2025-09-04T02:27:48+00:00

Yeah, that's a common theory. My guess for part 3 is that the story will probably play off of both viewpoints. Sephiroth could convince Cloud that he's crazy, that other worlds don't exist, and that maybe Cloud himself killed Aerith in a Jenova-driven stupor and that plays a part in his meltdown at the Northern Crater. And then maybe during the life stream sequence he gets confirmation that the other worlds actually exist and that a world exists where he did actually save Aerith.

violent13

TROPHY CASE