History Literature / FinalFantasyVIIRemakeTraceOfTwoPasts

* DyingTown: Nebelheim used to be a CompanyTown to Shinra in its early days due to mako research being conducted there, but now Shinra no longer has an interest in area, Nibelheim has been slowly shrinking in size, with many of the younger villagers wanting to move to bigger cities. The village's status becomes even worse when monsters start becoming more prevalent in the area due to the reactor, with the village's only hope being Shinra's interference. Surprisingly Shinra actually agrees to help, which is what prompts Sephiroth's fateful visit to the village.

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Tifa's lack of any scarring from her attack from Sephiroth is addressed. Despite having severe damage that cut several bones requiring medical wire to keep her ribs in place, some skin transplants kept any scars from forming.

* MysteryMeat: While Tifa admits that Pops steamed bums tasted great, she was too afraid to ask where he got the meat from, and suspected it involved something unsavory.

* ShockinglyExpensiveBill: Shortly after she finds herself in Midgar, not only is Tifa wrecked with the anguished of losing her father and all of her hometown, but she also has to deal with the shockingly high price of the surgery that had to be performed to save her life, even though she doesn't have a cent to her name.

The novel came with the ''Final Fantasy VII Remake Ultimania Plus'' on July 15, 2021 and was available in Japanese only. Thankfully many parts have been translated online and an official English release was made available on March 21st, 2023.

** Tifa's cat, Mal (named Fluffy in the story), from ''VideoGame/BeforeCrisis'' is mentioned and it leaves her from time to time happens during one of her bonding scenes with Cloud. She doesn't know what happened to it since.

* OpenMindedParent: Brian Lockhart is portrayed as being very open-minded when raising, especially for a conservative little village like Nibelheim. He not only allows Tifa to become Zangan's pupil with little prodding but actually dedicates himself to helping her train once he sees how devoted she is to it.

* AdaptationNameChange: Tifa's white cat introduced in ''Before Crisis'' was named Mal in most adaptations, but the English localization for this story uses Fluffy instead.

* BathingBeauty: Tifa's love for showering is present in the novel, with her often mentioning doing it whenever she feels stressed. When she has the chance to shower in the Oranye clinic's fancy modern bathroom, she makes a point to note how luxurious modern showers are. It becomes a particular issue for her while living in the Container Row since she's forced to use the [[BathOfPoverty communal shower]]. She soon makes a deal with the Waterkeeper, paying extra so she'll have a lookout for her whenever she showers and so she has the chance to shower twice everyday, which is notably one of the few times Tifa uses her money for any kind of extra luxury.

* BitchInSheepsClothing: Dhamini and Rakesh look like they're looking out for Tifa at first but then it's revealed that [[spoiler:they were scamming her all along, having vastly overcharged her medical treatment and have been sabotaging her chances at meeting other people so that she'll remain under their thumb.]]
* BrainyBrunette: Tifa's intelligence is put on display several times in her part. She personalizes the work out routine of the people in her Calisthenics group and gets good at counting money to pay off her medical bills. Tifa even figures out how to get more work done for her stand that she is able to raise the money years before she first figured.
* BrutalHonesty: Pops, Tifa's first boss is Midgar, does not mince words and is quite harsh in criticizing her in her early days working. While at first, this troubles her greatly, she comes to appreciate his harsh honesty.

* CatharticChores: Aerith notes that doing little chores is Elmyra's mechanism to deal with stress, and she often does say chores with mumbling about her problems under her breath.
* CompanyTown: Nibelheim is described as being extremely dependent and influenced by Shinra, due to the Nibel Mako Reactor being one of the first ever built. Most of the village's residents are said to be descendants of the laborers who worked on the reactor and settled in the area. By the time the story takes place, Nibelheim is no longer very valuable to Shinra, which left the village to [[DyingTown steadily shrink over time]]. But the remaining villagers still hold some loyalty to Shinra, to the point that Zangan is all but expelled from the village just for badmouthing the company.

** Tifa's cat, Mal (named Fluffy in this), from ''VideoGame/BeforeCrisis'' is mentioned and it leaves her from time to time happens during one of her bonding scenes with Cloud. She doesn't know what happened to it since.

* CurbstompBattle: Despite Rakesh claiming that he followed Zangan's teachings, when Tifa gets on to his scheme to keep her in debt she puts him down in a few hits. Rakesh barely is able to croak out that he loves her (as his JerkJustifications). Tifa lays him out for that.

* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: Some of the characters in the Midgar slum sections are only known to Tifa by their role, such as the Container Row Watchman or the Waterkeeper (Tifa later learns her name is Aisha, but still refers to her as Waterkeeper after). Sometimes this is actually enforced, as many people in the slums use street nicknames, so they can escape their past.
* EvilDebtCollector: A sector 8 gang leader named Manson buys off Tifa's medical debt, forcing her to WorkOffTheDebt on his turf and he imposes several rules on her to keep her from leaving Container Row or getting a job in another sector, and often sends her intimidating messages via Rakesh. [[spoiler:{{Downplayed|Trope}} when Tifa learns Mason is Pops and questions him about it, she learns he never imposed any rule on her other than having her work at his food cart, causing Tifa to realize it was actually Rakesh who was making up the rules and telling her they were Mason's. When she settles things with Rakesh, Mason just lets her go without a fuss.]]

* MysteryMeat: While Tifa admits that Pops steamed bums tasted great, she was too afraid to ask where he got the meat from, and suspected it involved something unsavory.

* {{Slimeball}}: While at first Rakesh sounds like a NiceGuy and Tifa trusts him due to his past as a former pupil of Zangan, his actions become more sleazy and sketchy the longer she interacts with him, with him inviting himself to her home, offering her "work" at Wall Market and "forgetting" to give Marle's address to her. By the end she even discovered he [[spoiler: was scamming her from the very beginning as he overcharged her medical bills and was making up rules and sabotaging her relations so she wouldn't stop depending on him. In the end, he even steals her life saving to try to settle his debt with Mason.]]

* TrappedByGamblingDebts: Tifa is trapped in Container Row until she WorkOffTheDebt that she owns to Mason, the local gang lord that paid for her medical surgery. [[spoiler:Rakesh himself, is revealed to be in even deeper debt to Manson, due to actual gambling debts he got in Wall Market. He tries to pay off by stealing Tifa's life savings, but she manages to get them back just in time.]]
* TurnTheOtherCheek: Aerith experiences childhood bullying, particularly from a boy named Marcellus who claimed she "stole" his sister's name (Rona), simply because she initially went by the same name on pure coincidence to hide her Cetra identity, as per Elmyra's instructions. Despite this, she comes to Marcellus' aid when he really needs it, and never exacts revenge on him for all the torment he put her through.

* YouOweMe: When Tifa first starts working her second job in Second Heaven, Mason sends her an intimidating message via Rakesh to remind her he "owns" her and that taking a second job outside of his turf is against his "rules". [[spoiler:Later is revealed Mason sent no such message, has no such rule and doesn't care she has a second gig, it was all made up by Rakesh who has an EntitledToHaveYou crush on her and wanted to keep her isolated in Container Row indefinitely.]]

* BathingBeauty: Tifa's love for showering is present in the novel, with her often mentioning doing it whenever she feels stressed. When she has the chance to shower in Oranye clinic's fancy modern bathroom, she makes a point to note how luxurious modern showers are. It becomes a particular issue for her while living in the Container Row since she's forced to use the [[BathOfPoverty communal shower]]. She soon makes a deal with the Waterkeeper, paying extra so she'll have a lookout for her whenever she showers and so she has the chance to shower twice everyday, which is notably one of the few times Tifa uses her money for any kind of extra luxury.
* BathOfPoverty: Container Row, Tifa's first living arrangement in the slums, have no pumbling, which forces everyone there to have to use the communal showers to bathe. This is a particularly stressful task for Tifa, who is an attractive young woman and has to worry about [[ThePeepingTom peeping toms]] and worse. At first, she considers showering with a ModestyTowel for perpetuity, but the Waterkeeper sympathizes with her and puts a curtain in one of the shower stalls, labeling it the "ladies' stall" and offering to keep a lookout whenever Tifa uses it -- for a fee of course, but one Tifa gladly pays.

* AbhorrentAdmirer: It turns out that [[spoiler:Faz only helped Aerith and Ifalna escape because he was madly in love with Ifalna. Years after her escape, Faz runs into Aerith again and reveals what his true intentions were. What makes it worse is that, with Ifalna already gone, Faz then decides to turn his [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil unsavory desire]] towards Aerith (who, at this point, is [[WouldHurtAChild just a pre-pubescent child]]) on the excuse that she strongly resembles her mother. Thankfully, Elmyra arrives in the nick of time and knocks out the disgusting man before he can lay his hands on Aerith]].

* AskAStupidQuestion: Played for drama. When Shinra forces look for Avalanche members, Tifa defends her friend Water Guard. The Shinra trooper she hits gets finished off by Water Guard with a SlashedThroat. Later, when Tifa asks what happened to the trooper, Rakesh responds by saying he disposed of the body efficiently, not realizing that Tifa was wondering if the trooper was okay. Tifa curses herself for making such an assumption.

* CannotSpitItOut: Tifa does not vocalize all the times she liked Cloud in their youth.

** Tifa's cat, Mal, from ''VideoGame/BeforeCrisis'' is mentioned and it leaving her from time to time happens during one of her bonding scenes with Cloud. She doesn't know what happened to it since.

** In their last session before the Nibelheim incident Zangan tells Tifa that he will teach her the final lesson of his style one day soon. In the original game Zangan left Tifa's final LimitBreak manual for her to learn.

* {{Deconstruction}}: Tifa's good looks are shown to be an obstacle to her having actual relationships. Her friends back at Nibelheim often did things to get her attention, and she could tell that they only saw her as a prize to be won. The first person who tries to be her friend, Rakesh, keeps her in debt with medical bills that he inflated and steals her savings to stop her from leaving.

* DisappearedDad: Cloud's father is noted to be a wanderer who was "like the wind" and not well liked in Nibelheim. One day he disappeared in the mountains where his items where found but no body.
* FaintInShock: Happens to Tifa a few times as all the stress gets to her. Most notably when she knocks down a security officer and Water Guard finishes him off.

* GoodCounterpart: Aerith says that Elmyra's husband was basically the good version of Don Corneo. It shows when comparing their houses, while lavish for the slums his is a humble two-story house surrounded by vegetation while Corneo has a gaudy brothel plus S&M dungeon.
* GoodParents: A running theme is that both Aerith and Tifa had loving and well-intentioned birth parents. Despite the rigor of her tests putting her on her death bed, Ifalna looked out for Aerith's wellbeing until the very end. Tifa's father looked out for her and helped grow her hobbies and talents.
* GreaterNeedThanMine: When Barrett and Marlene show up disheveled from weeks of travel, Tifa puts up the money she had spent years building up to pay off her hospital bills to give them a place to stay.
* HumanTraffickers: Surprisingly, Tifa is revealed to have a fear of human trafficking and suspects Zangan of all people to be one in their first encounter. It does not help matters that when she wakes up in Midgar her living conditions greatly resemble the stories she had heard, and partly justified that Zangan was also randomly grabbing her arms and calves without consent (to check her muscle structure), raising suspicion.

* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Tifa is the only girl around Cloud's age in Nibelheim, and all the boys fought over her affection.

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: When Aerith first developed her powers as a Cetra, Hojo realized that Ifalna was replaceable as a test subject. He continued to increase the severity and frequency of her experiments, which lead to her being too weak to fully escape and dying at the train station.

* MythologyGag: There is a very minor character named "Gerad", possibly a reference to Edgar's alias in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI''.

* AnotherStoryForAnotherTime: At the end Aerith is interrupted before she can get into another story for Tifa. She says that she will tell Tifa her story another time. That of her first love.

* PeerlessLoveInterest: When hearing Cloud's decision to go to Midgar to become as famous as Sephiroth, Tifa feels that she really loves him but that he has become something unreachable like a star. Later averted when Tifa realizes that Cloud is an ordinary boy no different from the others, and falls in love with him for real.

* DemotedToExtra: Cloud is out of the spotlight of this story, with a few appearances and a small handful of dialogue.

* AbhorrentAdmirer: It turns out that [[spoiler:Faz only helped Aerith and Ifalna escape because he was madly in love with Ifalna. Years after her escape, Faz runs into Aerith again and reveals what his true intentions were. What makes it worse is that, with Ifalna already gone, Faz then decides to turn his [[NearRapeExperience unsavory desire]] towards Aerith (who, at this point, is [[WouldHurtAChild just a pre-pubescent child]]) on the excuse that she strongly resembles her mother. Thankfully, Elmyra arrives in the nick of time and knocks out the disgusting man before he can lay his hands on Aerith]].

* AbhorrentAdmirer: It turns out that [[spoiler:Faz only helped Aerith and Ifalna escape because he was madly in love with Ifalna. Years after her escape, Faz runs into Aerith again and reveals what his true intentions were. What makes it worse is that, with Ifalna already gone, Faz then decides to turn his [[NearRapeExperience unsavory desire]] towards Aerith (who, at this point, is [[WouldHurtAChild just a pre-pubescent child) on the excuse that she strongly resembles her mother]]. Thankfully, Elmyra arrives in the nick of time and knocks out the disgusting man before he can lay his hands on Aerith]].

* AbhorrentAdmirer: [[spoiler: It turns out that Faz only helped Aerith and Ifalna escape because he was madly in love with Ifalna. Years after her escape, Faz runs into Aerith again and reveals what his true intentions were.]]

* AbhorrentAdmirer: [[spoiler: It turns out that Faz only helped Aerith and Ifalna escape because he was madly in love with Ifalna. Years later, Faz runs into Aerith again and reveals what his true intentions were.]]