Sandbox / Final Fantasy VII: Machinabridged - Main Characters

Cloud Strife

Voiced by: Justin Briner

• Adaptational Wimp: The normally badass and aloof Cloud from the game is played like a confused, naive, whiny kid who's in way over his head.
• All Men Are Perverts: A big contributing factor as to why Cloud began hanging out with Tifa when he was twelve was because she had "pretty eyes"; an adult Cloud admits that he was definitely not looking at her eyes.
• Anime Hair: Lampshaded quite a bit in Episode 2; Barret notes that it makes him instantly recognizable from an otherwise laughably crude police sketch, while Tifa brings it up during her Prison Rape threat to Cloud, saying there's "so much to grab onto".
• Attractive Bent-Gender: Ends up beating out both Tifa and Aerith in Corneo's mansion while he's Disguised in Drag.
• Awesome Mc Cool Name: Zig-Zagged. Barret makes fun of Cloud's first name, but he thinks "Strife" is a badass last name.
• BFS: His Buster Sword, the impracticality of which is lampshaded in Episode 10.
• Bottled Heroic Resolve: He does some drugs to get into the right mindset to get Disguised in Drag and save Tifa. Unfortunately, they make him so loopy that he wastes two hours in the changing booth and comes down before going in.
• Butt-Monkey: There's no episode that doesn't make a joke at his expense, including the more serious ones. These jokes mostly center around his apparently girly appearance, his inability to back up his threats, and how he always seems to be causing trouble for AVALANCHE.
• Calling Your Attacks: He has a tendency to shout out the names of his attacks, usually slapping the word "SOLDIER" in front of it.
• Character Catchphrase: "I was in/am SOLDIER (dammit)!"
• Character Development: A dark example. Cloud begins the series as a wimpy, accident-prone Nice Guy who spends most of Season 1 as a victim of circumstance who rarely gets to make his own life decisions. In Season 2, he tries to salvage his crumbling ego by putting on a brave face and condescending attitude, which only serves to erode his likable traits and strain his already tedious relationships within the group, not helped by his increasing focus on revenge against Sephiroth. Just when he manages to turn himself around in Season 3, Aerith's murder sends him further back over the edge into a stoic, serious leader his game counterpart is typically Flanderized into becoming.
• Childhood Friends: True to the source material, Tifa and Cloud are childhood friends, though they're depicted as Vitriolic Best Buds here, seeing how Tifa took advantage of Cloud as a kid to make him do stupid stuff for her.
• Compensating for Something: He gets rather defensive when people call his Buster Sword a "hunk of metal on a stick".
• Creepy Monotone: Following Aerith's murder, barring the battle with Jenova-DEATH, he's pretty much stuck in no-nonsense monotone, showing the depths of his anger. Once Sephiroth breaks to him that he has Fake Memories, he goes full on robotic in tone.

• Deadpan Snarker: He has plenty of moments of making snarky comments at his companions, especially when he's fed up with them.
• Disappeared Dad: Lampshaded and Played for Laughs in Episode 19 during his conversation with Red, who is projecting his hatred of his own father.
  Cloud: My dad... well he was—
  Red: —never around?
  Cloud: Well, yeah. But that was because I never knew him in the first place.
  Red: Because he abandoned you.
  Cloud: (trying to sound sardonic) WHAAAT? Nooo! (sniffs) I mean, if he did, I'm sure he had a good reason.
  Red: (venomously) The reason was because you were born.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: He is frequently mistaken for a woman by several people. This makes it especially easy for him when he needs to disguise himself as one.
• Et Tu, Brute?: He is angry and devastated to find out that Cait Sith, whom he empathized with as a fellow No-Respect Guy, is a Sixth Ranger Traitor who isn't actually a fortune teller.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Many characters from both genders are shown to be attracted to him, including Aerith, Don Corneo, and Don Corneo's doorman.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He's a wimpy, self-important, insensitive screw-up who's guaranteed to get on somebody's nerves—particularly one of his party members—in pretty much every episode he's in. The reason the rest of AVALANCHE sticks around him in the first place is because they take him for a Lacerated Larry who won't stand a chance avoiding Shinra's police. As he starts pulling more of his own weight and fixing his own attitude problems, however, the group's favor of him gradually improves.
• Heroic BSoD: After the Internal Reveal about the Awful Truth is shown to Cloud, he shuts down completely to the point wherer he adopts a robotic Creepy Monotone. Hojo calling Cloud a "failure" has Cloud agree immediately.
• I Am the Noun: In Episode 12, thanks to getting his ego stroked by the voice in his head, Cloud stops declaring himself a former SOLDIER member in favor of, "I am SOLDIER!"
• I Just Want to Be Badass: Discussed and Deconstructed. As Barret puts plainly in episode 12, Cloud is a Small Name, Big Ego-type character driven by the need to validate his own strength so that others—and above all, he himself—might see him as the badass 1st Class SOLDIER he so frequently labels himself as. However, he's so deep in denial that he just comes across as insufferable and pathetic, and he ends up thrusting himself and his friends into dangers they can't possibly overcome.
• Jerkass Realization: The moment in Episode 18 where he learns that he'd unknowingly revealed and insulted the death of Aerith's old boyfreind in front of her comes as a huge one for him, as he becomes painfully aware of how much his Lack of Empathy comes across to others.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: He "f**ks up" so frequently that it deserves its own separate list. His friends have also renamed it to "Clouding it" in his dubious honor.
• Not What I Signed Up For: When he agreed to do a "solid" for Tifa at the start of the series, he didn't expect it to be helping a terrorist cell blow up factories run by the Planet's chief energy provider.

• Took a Level in Jerkass: After he lashes out for being pushed around and getting (at least partially undeserved) crap from his "friends" (i.e., Tifa) throughout season 1, Cloud gradually becomes much more sarcastic and callous towards everyone except Aerith throughout season 2, and his Lack of Empathy becomes much more prominent. [[spoiler:The moment in episode
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In his own words, he's "allergic to heights". To his great dismay, there's many a moment in the series that involves high climbing.

Tifa Lockhart

Voiced by: Sarah Anne Williams

• Adaptational Jerkass: Compared to The Heart of the team she is in the original game, Tifa is a crass, salty, Manipulative Bitch who tricks Cloud into doing stupid stuff for her. She also happens to be a traumatized wreck of repressed tragedy and bad memories. By the time Season 3 rolls around, however, she's gone through enough Character Development to match her original role.
• The Alcoholic: It comes with being a bartender. IE episode 15, she downs multiple shots of whiskey at Costa del Sol, and spends the next two scenes visibly drunk.
• Character Catchphrase: "Can you do me a solid?"
• Character Development: Despite still being as abrasive as ever, she becomes much more friendly and sensitive towards other people's feelings over the course of Season 2, as seen when she empathizes with Barret's Dark and Troubled Past, helps Aerith through her Heroic BSoD over Zack's fate, and berates Cloud for his insensitivity towards both moments. She also quickly bonds with Yuffie like a big sister only four episodes after punching the ninja in the face.
• Cool Big Sis: Yuffie sees her as one, despite the fact that Tifa views her as the exact opposite. Tifa eventually embraces the idea when they start hanging out at the Gold Saucer, however.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Tifa practically embodies this trope in terms of verbal abuse throughout season 1, where she gets away with all sorts of unprovoked insults and threats towards Cloud, including the implication of Prison Rape if he refuses to join AVALANCHE early on. This eventually bites her in the ass in the season finale when Cloud delivers his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to her, which forces her to admit she crossed a line she shouldn't have. From then on, she noticeably reserves the abuse for moments when Cloud does something to earn it.
• The Dreaded: Becomes this for Reno after she shatters his dick. When they next meet, he doesn't run right away and still trades verbal barbs with her, but he does try to get Rude to fight her for him.

• Jerkass Realization: Goes through an understated one at the end of season 1 when Cloud finally calls her out for her needless bullying and manipulative attitude towards him. While this puts her on sour terms with Cloud, she also becomes noticeably kinder in season 2.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Tifa starts acting much more like a considerate and understanding person towards her friends as their deep-seated problems come to light throughout season 2. She also softens somewhat towards Cloud despite their earlier falling out in the previous season finale, only letting him have it whenever he acts like a bigger jackass than usual.

Barret Wallace

Voiced by: Anthony "Antfish" Sardinha

• Character Catchphrase: "Don't fuck up." It's usually followed by someone fucking up. Episode 17 reveals that this was the last thing Dyne said to him around the time Barret's original support of Shinra's plans cost him his arm, his friends, and his home, serving as a tragic reminder to never make such a mistake again.
• A Day in the Limelight: Episodes 15 through 17 delve heavily into Barret's Dark and Troubled Past. Naturally, he and Red give Cloud flak for constantly trying to get a word in during "Barret's moment".
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Hates racists, thieves, giant robots, people who insult his gun arm, people who insult his parenting because of said gun arm, and above all else, people who fuck up.
• Heroic BSoD: He spends the later half of episode 15 in one when he's forced to revisit the ruins of his hometown, Corel, which was burned down by Shinra as a response to the meltdown of the Mako reactor Barret helped install.

• Made of Iron: In episode 17, Barret takes multiple bullet, missile, and laser shots without even so much as flinching. Cloud remarks how it's possible he's still alive.
• My Greatest Failure: He originally supported Shinra's plans to install a Mako reactor in his hometown, against the objections of his best friend. Not only did the reactor explode, but Shinra pinned the blame on the townsfolk and burned everything to the ground, killing his giant wife, leaving his friend for dead, and costing him an arm. From then on, Barret swore to live by his friend's (supposed) last words to never "f*ck up" again.
• Rage Breaking Point: When Barret is in the middle of a Heroic BSoD in episode 16 over his biggest fuck-up, Cloud's suggestion that he "just get over it" has the exact opposite effect, sending him on a furious tirade that leads to him almost splitting from the party for good. It gets so bad, he even revokes Red's N-Word Privileges and calls him a bad dog, (though not for entirely unsympathetic reasons).
• Shoo the Dog: After renouncing his friendship with Red in episode 16, Barret explains that because all of his old friends were killed on his account, he couldn't bear to lose any more the same way. Red refuses to take this as an answer.

Aerith Gainsborough

Voiced by: Kira "Rina-chan" Buckland

• A-Cup Angst: She's implied to be jealous of Tifa's more sizeable breasts when she grumpily mumbles that "they're not that big".
• Art Evolution: Her character portrait is updated in Season 2 to give her a bigger mouth, eyes, and head, resulting in an overall more cartoony look.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not for the most part, but her digs at Tifa are some of the driest snarks in the show.
• The Ditz: Besides her knowledge of the Planet and Lifestream, she's not exactly the brightest star in the sky when it comes to more practical matters, such as flowers not being able to break falls, or not accepting free helicopter rides from suspicious men in suits.
• Foil: In terms of personality, Tifa and Aerith are polar opposites. Tifa is a crass, cynical, violent psychopath who treats Cloud like crap, but proves to be a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Aerith is a flighty, gentle airhead who refuses to swear and gets along great with Cloud, but she also hides a bit of a nasty side towards other girls.
• The Heart: Her clingy tendencies aside, she is the most innocent and kindhearted member of the team.
• Heroic BSoD: She spends the last third of episode 18 in mournful silence after learning of her old boyfriend Zack's death.
• Hidden Depths: Barret believes she isn't nearly as dumb as she leads on to be when she fast-talks him into a dangerous situation in Episode 10. As Bugenhagen suggests in Episode 19, she's also not as oblivious to her own Cetra heritage as she seems, but is rather too scared to accept the truth.

• Inconsistent Spelling: The ongoing "Aeris or Aerith" debate comes up as an occasional Running Gag, notably on her naming screen, where the player flip-flops between each name a dozen times before settling on the latter.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Cloud tries keeping her out of a brothel because of her "incorruptible purity" vibes.
• The Ingenue: She's canonically 22 years old, yet she behaves like a young child who believes in fairies. However, it's implied that she may have had some sexual experience with her ex-boyfriend.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Deconstructed. She's sweet, flighty, ditzy, a huge Cloudcuckoolander, has elements of Magical Girlfriend, and is the first person to be nice to Cloud in a long time. However, all of those traits combine into a character that Cloud can't help but find weird.
• Medium Awareness: She appears to notice the bleeped-out swearing to some degree when she quotes the sailor-mouthed Reno.
  Aerith: We always invite Mr. Reno [to dinner], but he says his Turk blank-hole bosses never give him a day off, and should get off his blanking blank.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: In Season 2, her jealousy and hostility towards Tifa has grown to the point of refusing to heal her after she's been poisoned. She also shatters the party's Shiva materia after Cloud is stricken by Shiva's beauty.
• Turn the Other Cheek: It's her creed to forgive anyone who apologizes for any wrongdoing, even something that nearly gets her killed. The only time she struggles to forgive anyone is in Episode 18, when Cloud bluntly and unknowingly delivers the news of her ex-boyfriend's death to her and doesn't pick up on the obvious signs of their relationship, or how badly this crushed her. It isn't until after she's been consoled by Tifa midway through the next episode that she accepts Cloud's apology.
• Womanchild: She acts like a character straight out of a children's program

Red XIII (Nanaki)

Voiced by: Curtis "Takahata101" Arnott

A dopey and lovable dog and/or cat who was kidnapped by Shinra and used as a guinea pig in Doctor Hojo's experiments, including a five-billion gil project dedicated to teaching an animal how to speak English. Oh, and an exceptional amount of cross-breeding. He is welcomed into the party so Barret can fulfill his lifelong dream of having a talking dog best friend.

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• Berserk Button: Don't talk to him about his father. Or your father. Or whether or not you are a father.
• Disappeared Dad: His father, Seto, vanished while his people were at war with an enemy tribe, something Red never forgave him for. It later turns out he was turned to stone while defending their home.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": He resents being called by his real name, Nanaki, because it was given to him by his Disappeared Dad.
• Freudian Excuse: Ever since he suffered Parental Abandonment from his father, Red developed a pathological belief that all fathers are terrible people who eventually leave their children. He later admits that he doesn't really feel this way, however, and is just letting his anger get the better of him.
• Stepford Smiler: He harbors deeply seated daddy issues despite being a happy-go-lucky cat-dog.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Has a very one-sided version of this relationship with Barret. He prides himself as being Barret's best friend and gets along better with him than anyone else in the party. At the same time, however, he also considers Barret to be a horrible person simply because he's a father, which stems from his hatred of his own father.

Yuffie Kisaragi

Voiced by: Courtney "Mystic Pyro Freak" Williams

• Tagalong Kid: She's treated as such by the rest of the party, considering she's the youngest out of all of them at the age of 16.

Cait Sith and Mog

Voiced by: Nick "Lanipator" Landis

Vincent Valentine

Voiced by: Faulerro^note Curtis "Takahata101" Arnott for about 10 seconds

Cid Highwind

Zack Fair (SPOILERS)

Voiced by: Nathan "NateWantsToBattle" Sharp

A 1st Class SOLDIER whose voice mysteriously pops up in Cloud's head from time to time.

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• Adaptational Jerkass: He's much more of a dick than the voice Cloud hears in the game, speaking in vague terms just because he can, and stroking Cloud's ego whenever his delusions of grandeur come into play.
• Anime Hair: His parents describe him as having better hair than Cloud, whose gravity-defying spikes are already something to write home about.
• Composite Character: Implied. In the original game, the voice Cloud hears throughout the story is actually his "real" self that he suppressed when he gained Zack's memories. Here, the voice is hinted to be either a mental projection of Zack, or the real Zack somehow Sharing a Body with Cloud, but still fulfilling the same basic role.
• Insistent Terminology: Occasionally reminds Cloud that he's not just in SOLDIER; he's SOLDIER First Class, the highest rank of SOLDIER there is.
• The Lost Lenore: Though she doesn't learn of his death until episode 18, he fits the bill for Aerith, who takes a shine to Cloud because he reminds her so much of Zack.
• Mellow Fellow: He speaks to Cloud with a chill, stoner-like monotone.

• Posthumous Character: He's supposedly dead before the series begins, though given that Cloud is hearing his voice, it's unclear just how true this is.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Whatever his intentions, Zack keeps encouraging Cloud's delusions of being in SOLDIER, leading to Cloud making more of an ass of himself than usual.
• Walking Spoiler: Though the credits reveal the voice's name before it's mentioned, simply knowing about his true identity gives away one of the story's biggest twists, namely that Cloud isn't who he says, or thinks, he is.