Final Fantasy VII Remake Lore Thread - Sephiroth, Memories, Whispers and the Worlds

DISCLAIMER:

I do not work for Square Enix. I am not Nojima Kazushige.
Everything I say could anytime be contradicted by Square Enix saying "lol no."

What I am doing here is compiling lore bits ofFinal Fantasy VII as based on what is presented for the last 6 years people conjured up theories that, using the provided lore at hand, cannot happen and still insist to this day that it is the case.Should Square do more retcons than they already have or not even retcon more but simply choose to contradict themselves I cannot do anything about it. Until then I will go by the most lore consistent conclusions.

Also I do not know why this forum always concatenates words when I post my stuff when I wrong same words seperately but it is 5:30 AM and I will not fix it now.


Preliminary Statement:

FinalFantasy's lore foundation are the Studies of Planet Life,also known as "Planetology."
Planetologyteaches the cycle of rebirth.
Everything is born from theLifestream, the soul of the Planet which consist of energy, souls andmemories.
Something lives, experiences and dies.
The oldand new returns to the Planet and enriches the Lifestream.
Anythingthat takes out the Planet's content outside of the natural life cyclemakes the Planet's life growth stagnate.
These thingsare:
Sephiroth - an entity being able to harvest and misuse theenergy for himself
Jenova - an entity being able to infectLifeforms and absorb their energy
Mako Reactors - Facilitiesthat refine planetary energy and produce articial Materia and useMako Energy as energy source
Casting Spells with Materia -directly draws out planetary energy to summon natural forces; earliermisunderstood as simply being a catalyst betwen caster and nature tosummon naturl forces

Newly established information: TheLifestream's content is tied to time.
Thisis either a retcon - that directly contradicts the lore of theoriginal game or it is not a retcon and not meant in the most literalway possible.
If all memories from all time are accessible thereis not Planetology. The Planet cannot grow as it has everyinformation available in it already destroying the point of what itsadversaries are - or at least recentering the narrative focus anddescribing them as another form of threat. It also leads to multiplecausality paradoxes when an adversary takes out a memory in thepresent that factually exists in either the future of the past orelse it would not be there in the first place.

New information: Stamp
A ShinRa mascot that never existed in theoriginal game. First introduced as some funny addition it laterturned out to be a mark of difference.

Newinformation: Worlds(Sekai)
FinalFantasy VII Remake Project introduced the concept of worlds. As ofnow these are misunderstood by many as "timelines." Theyare NOT timelines. Square refuses to use this word and neither theoriginal concept of planetology nor the Remake allows for this to bea thing. There is only a single case of them being called "timelines"and that is in the English version of the game. The Japanese versionsticks to classic Japanese ambiguity by referring to it as a "futurefate's creation."
! Square Enix was asked on stage how manytimelines there are. They answered there are 7 worldsreferring to the different Stamp dogs.
! The originalFinal Fantasy VII was nowhere to be seen in those 7 worlds.
!Sephiroth introduces Cloud to those worlds in Final Fantasy VIIRebirth. He explains that these worlds, that many worlds exist, theydie and then they return to the Planet.
! None of hisexplanations contained proof of timelines = corporeal duplicates of auniverse and thus their own Planet Gaia with their own Lifestream
!These "worlds" return to THE Planet. Theyare not physical duplicate universes with their own Gaia's unlesssomebody wants to understand this as mumbojumbo like "they areuniverses with their own Planet Gaia and Lifestream but then thesephysically existent universes reunite with that one Planet they splitfrom" which would be absurd, even for Final Fantasy VIIstandards.
!Ever Crisis plays with the idea by being called "Anotherpossibility for a Remake" and mentions the word "Possibilities"instead of worlds (let alone timelines) in its AnniversaryEvent.

New information: Feelers
Also known as Whispers or Arbiters of Fate.
Originallyintroduced with the newer properly used gimmick that they could onlybe seen by Aerith and then later by those that were touched by thosethat saw them already, they were explained to be protector's of theplanet's fate. This lead to the character's making statements aboutthe future and how it is not set in stone. With a few selected scenesthis leads to the conclusion that the Remake is about alteringtime.
Feelers are entities of the Planet. They did not exist inthe original but are directly tied to its memories. Any moreinformation about them is to be found in the Sephirothsection.

Sephiroth and his relevance as the true main character (and rockstar) of FinalFantasy VII – and a bit about the Feelers
Themain villain and antagonist of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIIAdvent Children and Final Fantasy VII Remake Project. Sephiroth wasbeaten in the original game in 1997 but the popularity of the gameled to the fans always demanding some form of comeback from FinalFantasy VII. This would lead to Square Enix announcing Final FantasyVII Advent Children, a sequel movie. While it was made KazushigeNojima wrote a novella On the Way to a Smile that would bridge thegap betwen the game and the movie. Later they would announce moreprojects under the name "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII",most prominently Final Fantasy VII Before Crisis, Crisis Core andDirge of Cerberus.

Since Sephiroth was already dead at thetime of the movie they used a thematic cheat engine. Kazushige Nojimawrote Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2 andKingdom Hearts Chain of Memories. The last three were all written nottoo long after each other and around the time or shortly before thesequel for Final Fantasy VII was built up. All of them focused in oneway or another on the coninued existence of any form of life andconsciousness and its core through memories. This also would lead toKazushige Nojima thematically tieing Final Fantasy X and VII togetherand having references to it in X-2 so he would have to answer in oneof the interviews many years ago some questions about the idea. Tothis day the connection is supposed to be there, even beingreferenced in Remake and Ever Crisis but it never became a fullyfleshed out thing. More an "there is something." It stillhelps to understand his creative thoughts when you know the Farplaneand the Lifestream are supposed to share the same spiritual ... well,"matter."


InFinal Fantasy VII On the Way to a Smile Sephiroth refuses to returnto the Planet. Despite himself having his grudge against humanity hehas the greatest fear of mankind: He thinks if he returns to thePlanet he lets go of his consciousness and "Sephiroth"fades into non-existence. Aerith who is a Cetra knows better as sheis aware or at least understands it as "entering a new state ofbeing."
AsSephiroth continues to lose more and more of his former life to thePlanet, he crafts a plan: by dismantling himself down to hisessentials, casting aside any memory he deemed irrelevant, he canfocus the core of his being on persisting. For this he ties himselfto Cloud’s memories about him. This way, no matter if the Planettakes away parts of himself, he can restore the rest of his being.This directly relates to the Final Fantasy X and X-2 idea thatsomewhere somehow what makes us "us", so basically theexistential ID is linked to memories and like Final Fantasy Xintroduced it, even to memories others have about us, which is aconcept that was introduced when the Pyreflies were explained whichwould not only contain memories of somebody but also react to thememories somebody else had about that somebody. In the first gamethis would lead to memory reflections in the Farplane. And in thesecond game because of Pyreflies storing those memories it would leadto imprisoned Pyreflies in the Den of Woe leading to duplicateShuyins that possessed their own level of consciousness with one ofthem possessing Nooj, later Baralai and then carrying out the grudgeof Shuyin while in the Den of Woe further memorieswould wait that would possess the Gullwings and drive them insane. InFinal Fantasy VII the concept of "duplicates" was not usedfor Sephiroth but only to bring back "the" Sephiroth butthe foundation is the same. It also is an interesting parallel towhat the Remake does as it actually does introduce duplicate imagesof characters and "worlds." Almost like a certain gamewhere the memory of a town from 1000 years ago was relevant enoughand would in that game even summon a copy of that town far out in thesea …
Thelatter info obviously is not relevant here for Final Fantasy VII assummons in Final Fantasy VII are actually corporeal and that happensbecause of summoners who have the power to materializedreams/memories.



In Final Fantasy VII On the Way to a Smile Sephiroth crafts a newplan to come to new power. For that he uses souls of those who werenot ready to pass on. Aerith counter-acts by helping them return tothe Planet and asks some Cetra to do the same. When she approachesSephiroth he scares her away. In Final Fantasy X those who would notbe ready to pass on would be Unsent except there they still possessthe abilities to run around in bodies. Eventually they turn intomonsters (Eng.: "Fiend") though. Just like Aerith and theCetra Final Fantasy X has a means to help non-ready entities. That isthe sending dance of a summoner.
The souls or to be more precise because that is what is relevant, thenegative energy that Sephiroth can actually use is repurposed intothe "Black Lifestream", his own Lifestream branch that hecontrols. Meanwhile in the physical world the Geostigma manifests, anillness that came into existence by Jenova cells entering theLifestream. When Gaia summoned the Lifestream to stop Meteor all overthe Planet people were exposed to it. Geostigma is a dormant illness.But the moment you give into negative, desperate emotions it breaksout. It is not the same type of illness that the Cetra had from the"virus" as Ifalna called it when Jenova crashed down but itall still boils down to the alien cells leading to people eventuallydying. Which then of course would even more pollute the Lifestreamwith those remains as well as the negative emotions that Sephirothwants.

Eventually Sephiroth gets so high from his own plan that he wants totell Cloud about it. He wants to create an astral projection butfails. At that point in time he has already forgotten what he himselflooked like when he was alive. He has the epiphany to use "mother’shelp" once again. For that he thinks about the Reunion. So heuses the substance of the Black Lifestream, three men who were noready to pass on an linked them to a part of his own existence. Hemade them manifest in the Northern Cave as Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo. Theypossess their own consciousness but know they are linked toSephiroth. They do not know in which way they are linked to him buthave inherited the urge of the Reunion and know that once it happensSephiroth will return.
While being on Gaia and following the natural urge of every Jenovacells carrier that is susceptible to the call, they are looking forremaining Jenova cells, for easier understanding equated to "Jenova’shead." Tseng and Elena found some when the remnants spawned andthey were almost killed but the Turks managed to get the cells awayin time.

Kadaj and the other two idiots leave the crater and are on their wayfor the cells. There they notice Cloud, whom as another cell carrierthey refer to as their big brother. Considering he is a "Sephirothcopy" (Nibel survivor who got Jenova S-cells injected like Zackor the guy who "are" sick) they think he knows where thecells are. Kadaj eventually crashes at Rufus’ as he knows as theShinRa boss he should know what happened with the cells the Turksfound.
While Cloud whose guilt over Aerith’s death has activated theGeostigma in him, spiraling him down further and further into hisillness, robbing him of his will to fight, so much to the extent thaton Zack’s grave he even remembers Sephiroth’s (or in the oldgame, Jenova’s only) words after Aerith’s death and this knockwshim out completely. On a "side adventure" he also tried tosave the Geostigma infected children that the Remnants kidnapped.Having remains of the extraterrestrial cells in them Kadaj pollutesthe water of the Forgotten Capital in which Aerith was buried withhis own Black Lifestream substance causing a reaction in thechildren’s bodies that awakes the kind of-but not fully the samecellular remains of Jenova in Geostigma that would force the childrento follow the Reunion call. Neither the children, nor the remnantsare truly able to locate the cells though. When Rufus has enough ofall this and he notices the movie’s runtime goes towards the finalehe stands up in front of Kadaj and reveals he had the cells all alongand throws them away just to shoot at the box after Kadaj tries tocatch it.

After a long action scene where Kadaj tries to flee so he couldinitiate the Reunion he is waiting for Cloud. Aerith meanwhile waswith him and cast her Great Gospel Level 4 LIMIT Break she got fromthe Sleeping old man near Junon because the old man knew this spellwould be able to cure an hybrid-terrestrial-extraterrestrial illness2 years in the future. Since Kadaj’s body is no normal body but hisbody also just is composed of Black Lifestream and Geostigma matterhe runs away before it kills him. After losing to Cloud he thenswallows the Jenova cells and Sephiroth, having read Cloud’s mindthrough the encounter with the remnants has restored the memory abouthimself, reshaping the body of Kada with the cells into a new avatarfor himself and standing before Cloud once again.

After the battle that was as much the reason this movie exists as Letit Go was the reason for Frozen to exist, Cloud who seemingly go ahold of his demons – or his One-Winged Angel – the wannabeex-SOLDIER demands for Sephiroth to find peace in his memories.Sephiroth however knows that Final Fantasy VII is a product and thathe wil return. So he says "Watashi wa … omoide ni wa naranaisa." – I won’t become a memory. (I will never be a memory.)which is also reflected in his new final boss song in which one lineliterally talks about him not remaining in memory. Now obviously thisrefers to his link to Cloud that he established so that BECAUSE ofmemories he will never just exist in those alone.
Then one year later Dirge of Cerberus came out and, knowing thatFinal Fantasy VII had to return one day, they made Genesis, alsoknown as "G" in the "G Files" which would inCrisis Core be used as a red herring as it there stands for"Gillian," say that there is still work to do as he fliesof with Weiss, the Immaculate.
Having these two cliffhangers Final Fantasy VII was never done. Inearly 2008 Square made a comment about how the Compilation’s finalewill need to have a different form.

Fast forward: April 2020
Final Fantasy VII Remake gets released. Final Fantasy VII Remake isthe first part of the "Remake Project." Now Final FantasyVII is too big a game to be remade as one game. Also it makes moremoney this way. So its gets some additional as well as a fewunnecessary parts. The issue is however that the first game is onlysupposed to be about Midgar and Sephiroth is not in Midgar. This is aproblem. There cannot be supposed "main story" FinalFantasy VII without Sephiroth. So he comes in from Chapter 2 on within your face-this is my game moments. During the first encounter withCloud he tells Cloud in Japanese "You must not forget me."(Engl.: Hold on to that hatred.)
Shortly after that Cloud has his first encounter with Aerith and theFeelers. This leads to Sephiroth appearing in Cloud’s mind tellinghim he is not able to protect anyone. Which is Cloud’s mindset inAdvent Children.
Aerith and the Feelers would from that point on lead to Cloud havingvisions. Something that the game declares together with the Feelersas "fate" that the Feelers protect. Except those "visions"and everything about it in Final Fantasy VII lore have another namethe game never lets go of:

Memories.

While Cloud and the others are on their way doing what they have todo they encounter the Feelers a few more times while Sephiroth doeshis trout to torture Cloud. The characters come to the conclusion thatthe Feelers want to guide everything according to how the Planet issupposed to play things out.
This leads to multiple events where this does not make any sense atall except if nobody in the writing corner even cared, as the partybreaking the Feeler’s guide for the very first time would literallyalready mean the Feelers have nothing to defend anymore, the Feelerthat floats above a sleeping Cloud makes no sense while Sephirothtalks to him, the Feeler when Cloud lies on the ground beforeSephiroth talks to him in his mind in the church makes no sense, theFeelers blowing out the entire party including Wedge only to thenstill kill Wedge later on makes no sense and the Feelers blocking thehighway stopping the party instead of forcing them to leave Midgarmakes no sense.
Now one thing however makes sense: the Feelers are directly tied tothe Planet. And to memories. Sephiroth is all about memories. Heabsorbs memories and can restore himself from them. He absorbsFeelers. He shows Cloud projections with the Feelers. The Feelerscrate an image of the Ultimate Destrctive Magic Meteor beforeSephiroth absorbs them. He travels and spawns out of the Feelers, asRebirth then later also shows. Feelers are not only in Sephiroth butas Rebirth shows inside of WEAPONs, entities that were literallycreated by the planet to guard it, not some normal born creatures butan entity the planet itself spawned out of itself. We have seenexactly one creature in the Compilation that is equated to a WEAPONand that spawns directly out of planetary energy and that is Omega.WEAPON is not made out of a normal body, it was made purely out ofLifestream substance. Feelers are Lifestream substance. Call themmemories, guardians made of tplanetary substance for the memories orwhatever. But they are not just random spectres that block the roadto guide you like a traffic police officer.

The Feelers also have the power to attack Aerith and rob her ofmemories which she has had.

As said, the Feelers make more sense if they are seen as eitherliteral memories of the guardians of memories whilst any form of"arbiter of fate" or them protecting the future is more ofa metaphor than anything else.
When the Feelers gather, Sephiroth uses their collective thattogether forms another possibility. Sephiroth opens a portal to thatpossibility. The party finds themselves in another image of Midgar.Here the Lifestream retcon kicks in as that collective can also beseen during the moment that marks the ending of Crisis Core – (evenwith the most logical and consistent Final Fantasy VII way to explainthis, it makes no sense; even if none of it is literal alternatetimelines the Lifestream’s contents existing throughout all timejust should not be a thing).

After fending off the Feelers the party sees Meteor before them. Itis an image of the Feelers which Sephiroth unifies in himself. Hefights the party and then challenges Cloud after Cloud refuses tohelp him. Except after that the party does exactly what they aresupposed to do: follow the adventure to find Sephiroth, so no "theydo something different than what the Feelers show them."

Fast forward February 2024.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth reveals something: The image of Meteor thatSephiroth absorbs with the Feelers was not just a projection of theFeelers. It was Meteor and its fiery hurricanes just like at the endof Final Fantasy VII destroyed the townscape of Midgar. Except …what is this? Did Sephiroth now travel to another timeline with theparty only for the party to then randomly travel back after thefight?
NO!
The real Meteor appears at the end of Final Fantasy VII. This was notthe end of Final Fantasy VII. Not only that but Zack, who woulf dieWEEKS before the end of Final Fantasy VII arrives in the destroyedMidgar with an unresponsible Cloud and finds an unresponsive Aerith.
Now here is the thing …
The Meteor was not real. It was a memory. Because of everything Isaid about the Feelers was a memory. And same goes for that Midgar.And that Zack. And that Cloud and that Aerith. For the sake of storysimplicity marked with different Stamp breeds, Barret’s tatoochange and such.
Wait! What are you talking about?! Of course it is a time story!Beating the Feelers has caused all that!!!
No, beating the Feelers does not randomly change details about a dogthat had to have happened long in the past or Barret’s tatoo orZack randomly appearing during a time that seems to not fit if Midgarwas destroyed by a real Meteor.
BUT Sephiroth and Ever Crisis make one thing clear: Lifestreambranches approach each other, get interwoven and then disconnectagain. If "Other Midgar Image", "Other Meteor Image"and "Other Zack image" all get meshed together there doesnot need to be any form of miscalated arrival time for Zack for anarrival of Meteor that is supposed to happen way later except thereis an Aerith which would then again mean it is in that regard notZack who is too late but Meteor and so on …
AND … after Sephiroth is done in Rebirth spawning out of Feelersand harvesting more of them he finally for the first time explainsCloud anything resembling some sort of story relevance. The Planetgives birth to worlds. They perish and return to the Planet again.What now? A Planet gives birth to a replica of itself (and a universewhich it needs)? It enters its own physical universe and then itreturns to that Planet again (together with that universe)?
No.
Instead the planet has those ideas based on those memories or as EverCrisis calls them "possibilities." In Ever Crisis it iseven pointed out that Sephiroth for that event aims for making thepossibiliy he desires to become true. That also in an on itself showsnone of these things are of corporeal matter as alternate timelinesare never meant to be "theoretical possibilities" instories in which they are truly used but as a factually parallelyexistence alternative.
When Cloud and Aerith meet each other in the "other world"Sephiroth spies on them. He tells Aerith he would not have expectedher to be here, in a world that is doomed. Why, though? If all ofthem are actual timelines they would all have their own living ordead copy of Aerith. Except we never once in Rebirth see Cloud orAerith with their duplicate bodies interact as duplicates. We seethose bodies and see them unconscious. And then, shortly before theend of the game, "our" Aerith wakes up "our Cloud,"in that other image of their bodies. They are not alternate versionsof Cloud and Aerith (as said, Sephiroth would not be surprised to seeAerith there then). Aerith jumped from one Lifestream branch to thenext – hinted at the Cave of the Gi where Aerith is able to get alook into the other possibility – and once its necessary hidingwith Cloud, having a moment with him and giving him the WhiteMateria.
Sephiroth appears and gets rid of that other image of Aerith’sbody. Then he reappears, just like the rest for the finale at theForgotten Capital. In the Forgotten Capital Sephiroth awaits the"sekai no majiwaru", the world’s intersecting. Lifestreambranches break of the sky and Sephiroth, all horny about negativeemotions infests those branches, creating a … Black Lifestream.

Sephiroth then kills Aerith. But Cloud being both stuck in theworld’s intersection as well as being a lunatic does repress that.He only sees Aerith smiling in his arms. Zack then uses theintersection through the helps of the White Feelers to cross thebridge and help Cloud. Sephiroth disconnects them from each other.In one of the doomedpossibilities Zack helps them while Sephirothuses his Feelers/memories to appear in front of the party. It is allone and the same Sephiroth, carrying, loosing the same horn in allpossibilities when he looses it in one.
When Sephiroth is done though and alone with Cloud at the Edge of theUniverse (Edge of Creation) Aerith uses the White Whispers for onelast bridge crossing. The Feelers and the White Feelers cancel eachother out, transforming the Edge of the Universe into something thatmakes it clearer that this place is not a place of actual physicalform – not that that was a question at any time – and togetherthey fight Sephiroth. At least until he decides to leave. Cloud andAerith "leave" the place and Cloud returns to his worldwith Aerith no longer being visible for anybody else and Cloud noteven realizing that the others saw her die while he did indeed seeher die but repressed that.

Afterthoughts
Overall there are a lot of things to be said about all of this.Obviously I also tried to include a little bit of a humorous notehere so things would not read to dry. But since so many people –not necessarily in this forum, not that I have seen one – for thelast 6 years decided to worship all theories of their favourite bigyoutubers who not only copy from each other but also ignore half ofwhat all the games say (almost like this is the same game line wherepeople question Sephiroth’s status as main villain when the secondCD has a line that says "It was all Sephiroth’s doing.")I want to compile as many things as come to my mind.
Now to be clear, when the Remake came out I did not even think aboutthings that deeply. That was for one reason: The game did not make agood point about this being a time travelling story. The more I wassurprised when people said "this is a time travelling sequelstory, not a remake." First of all, a sequel and a remake arenot mutually exclusive. Second, I never understood the point of whypeople thought this was a time travelling story because not only doesit as said, not really work with the original game but also notreally with the Remake itself. Instead I originally thought this wassome sort of they tried to be creative with a boostrap-paradox sortof Remake where the party gets information we already know but notwith the meaning of "because this is a sequel" but simplyas sort of creative liberty to enrich the story and then ultimatelyit would still lead to the same goal. I was surprised with how manypeople went down the time travelling time line path. But it at leastmade me think about the sequel thing because I had been waiting forboth a sequel as well as a Remake for so long so I do agree. It canvery well be a sequel. But considering it can also story-wise as wellas gameplay wise be a Remake these things do not need to cancel eachother out.
Now I really wondered why people were so stubborn about the wholetime thing. Yes, the words time, future and fate are being used. Butthe original Final Fantasy VII and many other games also use wordslike "future." That does not mean anything. Especially notif the original creators established a concept long before that ismore consistent, less problematic and also more creative. I noticedover the last years that because timelines have become such a bigpart of pop culture that whenever there is an element of repetitionor time mentioned in any form people immediately spawn ideas abouttimeloops, timelines or sequel. So judging by that, Final Fantasy VIIis not "obviously that" it is more a matter of peoplefollowing the collective mind of pop culture. And following thecontent creators they like as well as always making up the usual "ithas already been confirmed" this will lead to only reinforcingthose thoughts until the next product comes out that then hopefullyat least resolves anything in something resembling logic.
I personally together with:
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy X & X-2
Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories
all written by Kazushige Nojima and all about memories (the lattereven has Naminé ask Riku if she should lock Ansem out of his heartby rechaining his memories)
as well as
On the Way to a Smile
Advent Children
and Ever Crisis (even though that only was included from 2023 on)
had the conclusion that whatever this is, it is some sort of MentalPlane thing. The first and most obvious thing that came to my mindwas that it is Cloud’s Mind and that Aerith who has a link to himwants to "Remake those Memories" to stop Sephiroth who alsohas a link to him from returning while Sephiroth tries to return aswell as kind of manipulate those memories to return stronger thanever. But I was also open to the idea of this being in a collectivemind or the Lifestream and with the whole worlds thing and how EverCrisis has shown it shows more and more for me that this indeed ishappening on the mental plane. And not just those other worlds. Butalso the one we run around in the Remake. I very much think thateither in the next game – or maybe the one afterwards as theyalready teased the idea of going further and if they cannot wrap upwhat was done in AC and in DoC within the next game they will have todo that in a fourth game – we will see the reality.
Or one could say
Final Fantasy VII Reality
or a Final Fantasy VII Revelation
or that this was all part of a
Final Fantasy VII Remembrance.

Oh yes ... and I thought I should mention that people also copy-paste from each other there is something like an "ore"-Sephiroth. Sephiroth at the Edg of the Universes uses "ore" like he does before his villain path.
Let me make one thing clear here:
There is NO SUCH THING as an ore-Sephiroth. Sephiroth in On the Way to a Smile also uses "ore." This is not some "Remake secret plot twist." I do think it is very much possible that the Remake instead of being a full on sequel actually IS On the Way to a Smile, so that would fit the "ore"-time frame instead of what others try to see here. It would also fit the Feelers being used like the Black Lifestream. But I would not read too much into him using "ore" because, as said, in the novella he uses it as well and he 100% was the evil villain back then so either Kazushige Nojima forgot about that or people misunderstand that.



Anyway, I am tired. I will write more if I feel like it.