The Number 7

[DocFrance]

In real life, the number seven means alot of different things. Seven goes back as far as some old religions of the middle east region.

--seven days in the week
--seven colors in a prismatic rainbow
--seven different notes in an octave
--seven wonders of the ancient world
--the seven deadly sins
--the seven circles of hell
--Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai
--Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves
--in American football, a touch-down and a field goal will give your team seven points
--of course, Final Fantasy VII

In addition to all these (and more) relations to seven, FF7 has it's own devotion to the number seven.

--Seven main characters: Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, Aeris, Red XIII, Cait Sith, and Cid.
--Seven head Shinra employees: Pres. Shinra, Rufus, Reeve, Heidegger, Scarlet, Hojo, and Palmer.
--The Shinra building has 70 floors.
--Lucky 7's: when your HP is at 7777.
--Sector 7 and Tifa's 7th Heaven.
--7 years between Cloud and Tifa's promise and the flashback of the same.
--Seven characters (Cloud, Barrett, Tifa, Aeris, Red XIII, Yuffie, and Cid) have seven different limit breaks.
--After you defeat Hojo on the Sister Ray, there are seven days until Meteor hits.
--The Buster Sword's blade has seven corners.
--Sephiroth slashes or stabs seven known characters with the Masamune (Pres. Shinra, Tifa's father, Tifa, Aeris, Tseng, Cloud, and Zack).
--In the final battle, Sefer Sephiroth has seven wings.
--After Cloud's first battle, his level goes from six to seven.
--Tank #7 was faulty on the Shinra 26.
--There are a total of seven targets in the battle with Hojo.


OK, I just wanted too post this as a "hey, that's pretty cool" thing. But feel free to add some more significant sevens to this.

EDIT: Oops, forgot there were spoilers in here.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Midgar is normally powered by eight Mako reactors, but AVALANCHE destroys one at the beginning of the game, leaving seven. This obviously has some intense deeper meaning that only people who like to show off their sprawling vocabularies intellectuals will be able to perceive!!

[DocFrance]

Heh, Kishi just reminded me: after the sector 7 plate falls, there are seven sectors remaining in Midgar

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

There are six main characters besides Red XIII. Thirteen minus six is seven!!!

[chadmonkey]

- In the first seven battles you will fight seven battles
- You need a minimum of seven chocobos to get the knights of the round materia:yellow1 + yellow2 = green & blue, green + blue = black, black + yellow3 = gold: yellow1, yellow2, yellow3, green, blue, black, gold)
- seven shows up in a lot of prices at shops in the world

[edczxcvbnm]

Originally posted by Kawaii Ryûkishi
There are six main characters besides Red XIII. Thirteen minus six is seven!!!

:chuckle:

Now your just making crap up! Reminds me of listening to the radio after that shuttle went down.

2 disasters + 14 total crew members = 28! They just kept doing it until they started to add a number that had no relevence to anything.

:love: :love: - 1 heart = 7 hearts! :whoa:



Originally posted by chadmonkey
- You need a minimum of seven chocobos to get the knights of the round materia:yellow1 + yellow2 = green & blue, green + blue = black, black + yellow3 = gold: yellow1, yellow2, yellow3, green, blue, black, gold)
-

WRONG! You only need one chocobo. Just beat Ruby weapon to get the gold chocobo!

[Shoeberto]

Four male main characters, seven testicles! plus three female characters make seven!

[Rostum]

Originally posted by DocFrance
--Tank #7 was faulty on the Shinra 26.


I'm pretty sure it was #8?

[Big D]

This obviously has some intense deeper meaning that only people who like to show off their sprawling vocabularies intellectuals will be able to perceive!!Damn straight. Here goes...
Numerology has never appealed to me, so I'm not gonna comment on the 'significance' of 7 too much. Besides its status as a 'lucky number' for some, I don't know too much about it. It IS clear, though, that the number 7 (and to a lesser degree, 9) appears throughout the game.
In response to 'Kishi's statement, AVALANCHE actually bombs two reactors, leaving a total of 6.

Anyway, there are some good articles on other websites, detailing this and many other mysterious references in FFVII - in particular, the ever-popular Kabbalist/Qabalist symbolism.

This is a good one:
http://www.geocities.com/anguipes/upd.html

This one has a big list of 'sevens' from the game, most of which have already been mentioned:
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Dungeon/2857/ff7sevens.html

Really, there's not too much 'significance' to the repetition of '7' in the game; if anything, it's more of an in-joke, or even a coincidence. There's some scope for discussion of 7 as a lucky number, though, especially considering the importance of chance encounters (Cloud and Aeris on the streets, that sort of thing) and BAD luck in the story.

But as I said, numerology's really not my sort of thing. Maybe Besimudo will have something useful to add?

[Princess Rinoa]

You know I never thought about that.. hmm...plus Final fantasy 7 in the uk costs £17 and 2nd hand one is £7 note the 7's!!!

[Calvin]

There's also 7 command materia....Steal, Sense, Throw, Morph, Deathblow, Manipulate, and Mime

Also, how many elements are there in FFVII? (e.g. Fire, Earth.....)

[Big D]

Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Lightning, Ice, Gravity, Holy... 8. Dang it. There goes that elaborate comspiracy theory...

[zacks_clone]

yeah..it was tank 8.

[Calvin]

Originally posted by Big D
Earth, Fire, Water, Air, Lightning, Ice, Gravity, Holy... 8. Dang it. There goes that elaborate comspiracy theory...

Damn. Well at least that correlates to the number of reactors at Midgar. Hell.....we can come up with all sorts of stuff with this. Like how each reactor is pumping out a specific element. And the 8th one was for Holy, but they never completed it. OH OH!!!! And that's why they wanted Aeris, because she had Holy materia. The possibilities are endless.....and ridiculous.

Here's another ambiguous number reference. After Avalanche destroyed the two reactors, there were only 5 in operation. And there are (or were) 5 Weapons.

[DelightfulSpekkio442]

Poison (Bio) and Black (Meteor) are elements, aren't they? That makes it 10.

~MJE~

[edczxcvbnm]

Originally posted by DelightfulSpekkio442
Poison (Bio) and Black (Meteor) are elements, aren't they? That makes it 10.

~MJE~

Minus W-Item, W-Summon and W-Magic =7 :whoa:

[Besimudo]

Numerology links things.

For instance Zeus, Poiseidon and Hades are linked by the number 3....3 wives, trident and a 3 headed dog repectively. In asia 7 is the spirit. 8 is heaven and 9 humanity.

What does this mean... well no ones figued it out after 3000 years so start trying.

[Sephex]

edczxcvbnm has 7 replies to the same topic in two different forums! edczxcvbnm just os happens to play FFVII!

In the end I am saying if you look for coincidences like this, you will find them. It kind of makes the whole numerology thing obsolete. I have done it before with many things I enjoy, inculding music.

[CloudDragon]

-According the the bible, the world was created in 7 days.

-Sector 7 Plate was the one to fall.

-I have beaten the game all the way through 7 times.

- 7 times 7 divided by 7 = 7.

[Big D]

7 letters in 'insane'.

7th post in this thread was the funniest by far.

14 letters in 'Kawaii Ryûkishi'. That's an average of 7 per name.

7 letters in 'Fantasy'.

7 shots of something strong to help it all make sense.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Originally posted by Big D
In response to 'Kishi's statement, AVALANCHE actually bombs two reactors, leaving a total of 6.They never succeeded with Reactor #5.

[Calvin]

Originally posted by Kawaii Ryûkishi
They never succeeded with Reactor #5.

Are you sure? I remember seeing the reactor explode as Cloud was falling down to the church. That's why Barret was pulling Tifa away. But I could be wrong.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Oh yeah. :aimsun:

[DCI Superfan]

--seven different notes in an octave

i see what you're getting at, but technically you're wrong ;)

i don't know why that is that you'd think they didn't succeed... i mean, because for some reason, i always think they don't succeed with that one, even though i know it blows up... wait... i know... it's cause, unlike with the first reactor, the camera doesn't pan above midgar showing the reactor blow up, the shockwave, etc. it's a psychological thing :)

[Big D]

It's strange, no-one ever mentions the destruction of the second reactor, either. People talk about "AVALANCHE, the terrorists who bombed a reactor." It's almost like they overlook it.
The reactor was quite clearly wasted, though - it was a fairly huge explosion.

[Calvin]

They probably tone it down because it isn't as important as the first one. Also, it seems that Shinra didn't really care about it being destroyed. After all, the trio was cornered on that bridge outside of the reactor, showing that Shinra was waiting for them. Even the president himself made an appearance. And they obviously didn't disarm it. Maybe they wanted it to be destroyed. So the people of Midgar would hate Avalanche and love Shinra more. But it still seems strange that they would let a reactor simply be destroyed........hmmmmmmmm.

[Fighter2knight]

Calvin forgot Double-Cut, Slash-All, and Mega-All, and, of course, Master Cmd..

[CloudDragon]

Okay, just talking about the second reactor being bomb ruins the whole thing.

-There are 7 assholes who have posted in this thread, including me.

-Kishi has 7 tentacles.

-Barret has 7 holes on his gun arm which shoots out fire. Well I made that one up, but if someone would like to check, go ahead.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

I have no tentacles. You must be confusing me with the immortal and revered Tentacle Penetration God, who is the owner of countless tentacles of every size and flavor. And is most certainly not me.

[Eyece]

7, religious wise means spiritual harmony.

[DJZen]

In which religion?


There are 12 notes in an octave, but there are seven notes to a musical scale (remember Tifa's piano? Do re mi fa so la ti, the do at the end is the start of the next scale).

[DelightfulSpekkio442]

Actually there are 8 notes in an octave. Latin root. :D

~MJE~

[o_O]

If one considers the bottom and top note in an octave to be the same, even though it is only in name, there are seven different notes in an octave, as Doc France worded it.

[DocFrance]

Bingo. Thanks... um... how would you pronounce "o.O"??? :p

[Big D]

I've always thought of it as "oh OH", but then that's just me.

[o_O]

It's correctly pronounced: "Bungeye."

I just say "Oh oh." though, like Big D. xD


EDIT: *Closes tag.* :p

[Peegee]

7 letters in 'insane'.