Yeah, I loved seeing some of my favourite scenes ever to be in any story-driven game I played get partially decanonised just so that Tetsuya Nomura could show the world how much of a hard-on he had for Gackt.

Cloud is Zack about as much as Liquid Snake is Big Boss: both surpassed their predecessors in a big way in terms of being strong or whatever. (Big Boss was taken down by a man with an aerosol can and lighter. Liquid Snake was in a helicopter crash, then trapped in an exploding Metal Gear and then for an encore survived falling off the top of the damn thing, then took several shots to the chest before finally succumbing to a virus specially designed to induce a heart attack, which apparently took a really long time to take effect. I already mentioned the differences in how Cloud and Zack fought Sephiroth, and I am still disregarding the hell out of Nomura's crapstain.)