Sandbox / Final Fantasy VII Remake – Sephiroth

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Sephiroth

Voiced By: Tyler Hoechlin (English), Toshiyuki Morikawa (Japanese)^{Foreign VAs} Bruno Choël (French), Florian Hoffmann (German)

Click ^here to see his appearance as a teenager.

"Those who look with clouded eyes see nothing but shadows."

A mysterious man who appears to have some connection to Cloud. He wields a nodachi called the Masamune and was formerly a SOLDIER First Class, considered a living legend even amongst its top members.

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A-G

• Abled in the Adaptation: In the original, for the entirety of the game except its very end, Sephiroth was Dead All Along, his lifeless body stuck in the Northern Crater, using Jenova fragments to act in his stead. Here, while he's seemingly still in that condition, his ability to manifest through the Sephiroth Clones has improved to the point where he can make them take on his appearance and at least a semblance of his abilities. In the climaxes of both Remake and Rebirth, he arranges conditions where he's fully able to fight on his own with seemingly no host at all.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: He cuts an entire bridge with one swipe of his sword, and can casually one-shot the Whispers — which are noted to be resilient to physical attacks.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Even with his original incarnation being the World's Strongest Man, in this game Sephiroth steps it up a notch. As explained under All Your Powers Combined, in this game Sephiroth has powers displayed from his appearances in spin-offs like Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia, and his Advent Children incarnation, including flight, telekinetically moving buildings, mastery of magic, and long, powerful sword combos. In Rebirth he takes it further by expanding his powerset even more; he can weaponize the Whispers, conjure an imitation of Bahamut Arisen, perform his trademark sword attacks using constructs of darkness instead of an actual blade, and can perform stronger variants of those same attacks as follow-ups. The Rebirth Ultimania exposits that the Sephiroth Reborn fighting Cloud, Zack, and the rest of the party at the same time are all him as his existence now transcends dimensions, allowing him to exist on different worlds with the same consciousness. Suffice to say, he's practically a Physical God already before he's begun to absorb the Lifestream.
  • In the original game when he was a Guest-Star Party Member during Cloud's flashback of Nibelheim, Sephiroth's primary power came from his high level, mastered Materia, and top-tier equipment. In the same sequence as Rebirth, the different style of gameplay makes the power disparity between him and Cloud much more apparent even without taking those factors into account; Sephiroth moves and attacks very quickly, deals heavy damage, fires blast of dark energy to attack from range, his unique mechanic lets him use different finishers depending on his combo, and his ATB abilities are also very strong. He easily outclasses Cloud and everyone else the player has taken control of before.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Remake takes place entirely in Midgar, and Sephiroth was only mentioned during that portion of the original game. Here he appears as early as Chapter 2 (even if he's just a hallucination that Cloud suffers from), but makes a full, proper appearance in the final two chapters and is even the final obstacle keeping the party from escaping Midgar, where in the original story he wasn't fought until the very end. Rebirth has him turn into his Sephiroth Reborn form for the final boss fight in that game, even through Bizarro Sephiroth (as its name was localized in the original game) is not fought until the very end of the original game as the penultimate final boss.
• Adaptational Intelligence: While Sephiroth in the original game was established to be The Ace once upon a time, this was before his Sanity Slippage turned into something just one step above a Generic Doomsday Villain. Remake makes him a far more active threat, and he is markedly better at playing mind games with Cloud and knows exactly which buttons to push — he sows paranoia about Jenova's shapeshifting mimicry, the inconsistencies in his memories, his lack of visible response to emotional events, and more, in the name of worsening Cloud's crisis of identity and drive a wedge between him and his allies. He also has a plan in place more complex and far-reaching than in the original game, intending to become a Multiversal Conqueror, and as part of this tricks Cloud and his allies into killing the Arbiters of Fate to damage the timeline and potentially avert his future defeat.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Despite his more pronounced affability to Cloud in this version, Sephiroth does something in the remake that he didn't originally: he personally murdered Cloud's mother and uses it to torment him, telling him about how she begged him to spare her son and how he killed her with his own blade. He even takes it a step further and recites her dying Last Words just to twist the knife more. In the original, she was another casualty of his burning of Nibelheim, and her death wasn't brought up again. He also mocks Cloud every time he fails to reinforce Cloud's frustration at the world over having no control over the direction of his own life to motivate Cloud into accomplishing his goals.
• Adaptation Name Change: The form he takes in the final boss fight of Rebirth is known as Sephiroth Reborn, it was known as Bizarro Sephiroth in the original game. ^note In Japan it's always been known as Rebirth Sephiroth, so this is actually a more accurate name than the original localization.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Played with. When he appears he tends to be focused on mocking and tormenting Cloud, which is accurate to his characterization in Advent Children (as well as spin-offs like Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia), but isn't much like his original Final Fantasy VII incarnation, where he was focused on other goals and didn't pay Cloud any notice unless he was in a position to be a complication in Sephiroth's plans. He still has shades of his original VII personality, but they're downplayed in favor of his rivalry with Cloud. Somewhat justified by the game being ambiguous on when Sephiroth is actually appearing to Cloud, and when Cloud's psychological problems are causing him to hallucinate Sephiroth; it could be that the times Sephiroth is more openly contemptuous of Cloud are when it's just in his head. Even more justified by the ending, where it is revealed that Sephiroth seems to have a very different plan from the original game, and Cloud is a part of them.
• Adaptational Wimp: Make no mistake, Sephiroth is still incredibly dangerous and powerful in this continuity, but he's not the borderline Physical God he was portrayed as in the original game, and he can find himself overwhelmed in a fight if taken by surprise or fighting multiple skilled opponents.
• Alien Blood: When Cloud cuts into his Reborn form, the wound is covered in black substance and Black Whispers escape from the wound. This seems to hint that his current state when seen in the Edge of Creation is in actuality an aggregate of Black Whispers formed into his shape rather than a normal body.
• All Your Powers Combined: Does this with himself in his final boss fight in Remake, which combines aspects of his abilities from throughout his history. His moveset includes tier 3 magic, inspired by when he was a temporary party member in VII; he has Shadowflare and Heartless Angel from his Safer Sephiroth transformation; he has Octaslash from Crisis Core; he can manifest his single black wing first seen in Advent Children; he has attacks from the Dissidia games, with Scintilla and Hell's Gate coming from the original PSP games while Telluric Fury, Aeolian Onslaught, and Zanshin come from Dissidia NT; and he has several new attacks associated with darkness and can summon a dark aura around himself similar to his Kingdom Hearts appearances. It really emphasizes how dangerous Sephiroth is in Remake that he can do pretty much everything players have ever seen from him before and more, and even that still isn't the full extent of his power.
• Ambiguously Bi: His interactions with Cloud are filled with homoerotic subtext, often creepy and played for horror. Some of his quotes include "I am your everything", "Don't deny me, embrace me", and "I will not end, nor will I have you end". He tends to get very close to Cloud and touch him a lot while delivering cryptic messages.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Cloud is tormented by flashbacks and visions of him throughout the game, but it's sometimes ambiguous when Sephiroth is actually appearing to him and when Cloud is just hallucinating. The game's Ultimania guide specifies that there are four forms of Sephiroth in the game; the one that appears to Cloud in visions, the one in Cloud's flashbacks, the one manifested through the black-cloaked men, and the one that is fought at the end of the game. The guide doesn't specify exactly what the nature of the fourth Sephiroth is and leaves his existence as a question mark.
  • In an instance only in the Japanese voice-over, when Sephiroth appears at the Edge of Creation, he uses the personal pronoun of ore 俺 as heard in Crisis Core, instead of the more formal watashi 私 he uses in all his other appearances after his turn to villainy. Given the past consistency in his pronouns this is certainly a deliberate creative choice and not just a writer's oversight, but it's unclear what it could mean. Cloud could possibly be talking to an entirely different Sephiroth, one from the Crisis Core era, or it could mean that Sephiroth in the present (or the future) has had a shift in his personality and motivations.
  • During a protorelic sidequest, Sephiroth briefly meets Gilgamesh and is taken aback by seeing him and senses that he is a lost soul. It is unsaid if he actually recognizes him and if he does what that means for what Sephiroth actually is at the moment.
• Anger Is Not Enough: A running theme with Sephiroth is that both against and for him, anger will not be enough.
  • Against him rage will only lead to your downfall and falling into his schemes. Cloud, Tifa, Rufus, Barret individually and the party as a whole only end up in worse positions and nearly die when they let their rage towards Sephiroth's ambitions lead them. It is only when they are able to let go of their pain and forge ahead new that they actually slow him down.
  • His own rage at the world that created him has only led him down a path of isolation, hated by all and missed by no one. Most crucially, his inability to stop Aerith from directly interfering with his plans is a direct byproduct of him unable to see her doing something that doesn't involve anger but love and sacrifice.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • The man who murdered Cloud's mother and razed his hometown to the ground becomes his most hated enemy, just like in the original continuity. Sephiroth, for his part, continues to torment Cloud out of grudge for killing him during his rampage in Nibelheim, making good use of emotional manipulations and gaslighting to sadistically taunt Cloud over his failures at every possible moment, hoping to break him eventually by filling his heart with hatred and corruption. However, it's also heavily implied that Sephiroth is trying to goad Cloud to join his side, and doesn't "hate" him so much as he sees Cloud as a valuable pawn and even potential ally.
  • As Rebirth establishes, he's this to Aerith as well. Specifically, "future" Aerith, whose memories and consciousness have jumped from reality to reality as she searches for a means to prevent Sephiroth from steering fate into a direction where he wins. She hops from world to world, evading him and seeking the possible branches that can stop him. It's implied that they've been at this cat and mouse game for a long time. Sephiroth detests Aerith for not just having the power and means to be a direct threat to his plans, but also for reminding him of how much he's fallen as a person after giving in to his hatred and obsession with Jenova. Aerith, for her part, pities Sephiroth more than anything and tries to get him to see the error of his ways, to no avail.
  • Subverted with Tifa. Like Cloud, she also came to hate Sephiroth for destroying Nibelheim and murdering her father, but her anger is directed more towards Shinra as a whole, and as she later confesses, her own personal hatred eventually dissipated and she opts to focus more on stopping Sephiroth and Shinra because of the great threat they represent to the world, not out of grudge. For his part, Sephiroth takes sadistic delight in taunting Tifa's limited ability to help Cloud, gaslights Cloud into trying to kill her out of paranoia and when that fails he just opts to kill her himself, failing only because she's protected by a Weapon. However, Sephiroth never acknowledges Tifa as a personal threat, only a minor obstacle in his attempts to manipulate Cloud.
• Ax-Crazy: Do not let his stoic, calm demeanor fool you. Sephiroth is a murderously unhinged Omnicidal Maniac who plans to destroy all of life and recreate it in his own image. This part of him is especially pronounced during the Nibelheim incident where he set fire to the entire town and murdered many townsfolk in his path.
• Bad Boss: In a manner of speaking, the Sephiroth Clones are his followers who act on his will. However, Sephiroth only views them as disposable pawns. He allows many of them die while carrying out his orders in situations where he could have easily saved them via Demonic Possession, but chooses not to.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • In Remake, Sephiroth convinces the party that the Arbiters of Fate must be stopped via context-less visions of the future that will happen if they "fail to stop them", thus freeing destiny up to be changed - just as Sephiroth intended. Also, the fight against Cloud during the game's finale ends with Sephiroth easily defeating Cloud. This means Sephiroth walked away at the end of Remake with the win, having gotten everything he wanted and defeating the heroes. The only reason that Remake has a Bittersweet Ending instead of a Downer Ending is because the good guys still have a chance to stop Sephiroth from enacting the rest of his plan.
  • Again, in Rebirth: Sephiroth's merging of Cloud and Zack's differing timelines lets him brute force his way into killing Aerith again, ensuring fate goes his way instead of the party's. Even after the end of his super long Boss Rush, he leaves less because he's overwhelmed and more because he doesn't want to put in the effort to defeat them when he knows he's already won. However, ambiguity over whether or not another version of Aerith was saved in an adjacent timeline, and hopeful hints at her and Cloud reuniting, show it may not have been a total victory for Sephiroth.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: His murder of President Shinra, one of the major antagonists of Remake. Though everyone wanted Shinra to face justice for his crimes rather than outright be killed, Sephiroth does remove a major enemy of the party.
• Battle Aura: Has an intimidating aura of purple energy when he powers up by absorbing Meteor. If anything it is more intimidating that he dismisses it casually, showing that all that power means little to him.
• Beneath the Mask: Sephiroth manages to go all of Remake appearing Affably Evil, keeping his new motives ambiguous and treating Cloud in a manner that sends mixed messages about whether he wants revenge or wants Cloud to rule at his side. In Rebirth, this affable mask starts to slip, as he dials up his gaslighting in ways that are increasingly cruel and sometimes even petty, while Cloud under his control becomes an unabashed sadist. At the end of the game, when Cloud correctly points out that the Planet isn't rejoicing at having all of the timelines crammed together into one, it's screaming in agony, the mask fully comes off and Sephiroth spends the rest of the game engaging in cold-blooded torture out of anger at being told he's wrong, to such a degree that it alters his fighting style to be about inflicting as much pain as possible rather than actually winning the fight.
• Big Bad: Like the original game, he is the main antagonist of the remake though he doesn't fully become this until the end of part 1.
• Big Bad Ensemble: He, alongside the Shinra Electric Power Company, both share the main villain position at the end of part 1.
• Blade Spam: His Octaslash skill has him unleash a flurry of eight slashes from his sword. Some of his regular sword strikes also show multiple slash lines, similar to his moveset in Dissidia. In Rebirth, he gains an additional Octaslash called Octaslash Prime, a flurry of slashes that creates a vortex of wind after the original move.
• BFS: Sephiroth's weapon-of-choice is the Masamune, a nodachi as long as he is tall. It's capable of effortlessly slicing through almost any material, and he can swing it with one hand fast enough to parry a slash from Cloud's Buster Sword.
• Canon Character All Along: Bizarrely enough, it's implied this is the exact same Sephiroth from the original game who not only knows what's going to happen, but seems to have devised a new means of attaining his goal and preventing Avalanche from defeating him. His reaction to Gilgamesh also insinuates he's the same version from all of the other spinoffs.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Despite having Cloud at his mercy more than once, Sephiroth lets him live because he says that he needs his strength to defy destiny. This is also shown in that he doesn't kill his party members when he has the chance, if they died in a way that wouldn't break down Cloud he wouldn't take the risk of making Cloud more determined to fight him. Best shown in that he repeatedly gaslights Cloud into thinking Tifa is an imposter until Cloud attacks her in a daze, Sephiroth nearly kills Tifa himself as she is carried by the Weapon after Cloud saw it eat her but doesn't try any other time.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Compared to his Godhood Seeker mindset in the original game where he couldn't give less of a damn for anything but Jenova, Sephiroth knows how much Cloud hates him and willingly plays the role of an antagonist to the ex-SOLDIER while openly demonstrating just how immoral he could be if he feels like it. The prime example: the first thing Sephiroth does on screen is go into detail to Cloud on how good it felt to slice up Cloud's mother while Cloud watched.
• Casting a Shadow: His Shadow Flare attack has him conjure explosive orbs of darkness.
• Casting Gag: His previous long-term voice actor (George Newbern) was best known for voicing Superman. Sephiroth's new actor? Tyler Hoechlin is also known for his recent work in live-action...as Superman. Tyler also played Martin Brewer in the early 2000s show 7th Heaven.
• Characterization Marches On: In the original game, Sephiroth had little characterization of any kind, nor personal connection to the party beyond Cloud just being his most convenient pawn. This Sephiroth is rather petty, actively rubs his superiority in everyone's faces while also messing with all of them via half-truths, repeatedly screws with Cloud's head mostly for kicks instead of just solely to manipulate him, and so on. While he's still very much an egomaniac, he has grown to understand how everyone around him ticks, even if as The Sociopath it's all surface level for his machinations, and while he still fucks with Cloud, he also knows full well what the young man is capable of, providing both sympathies and the occasional offer of allegiance while trying to align Cloud towards his own ends for more than just the Black Materia delivery. The result is a much more intricately exploitative bastard who shows his hand more blatantly because he knows the heroes can't do much about it, and one that now seeks to rule the world to make himself eternal while keeping a higher cosmic influence from ever taking away that power, even if he has to create countless alternate timelines and then mash them all together with countless death tolls for his ultimate outcome.
• Child Soldier: In Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis a 15-year-old Sephiroth was deployed for the first time and saved Glenn Lodbrok, Lucia Lin, and Matt Winsord from being overwhelmed by Rhadorian soldiers, delivering an effortless Curb-Stomp Battle to the enemy troops. Following this, he took part in the broader Wutai War, becoming renowned as a legendary war-hero.
• Colony Drop: While inside the Shinra virtual reality presentation, Avalanche is shown a vision of Meteor destroying Midgar, and at the start of the final boss fight in Remake Sephiroth absorbs Meteor to power himself up. Also during the final battle's last phase, he'll use his Divine Proclamation skill, summoning a meteor and beginning a nine second countdown. If the party doesn't defeat him before the countdown ends, the meteor will drop on the party for a One-Hit Kill.
• The Comically Serious: When paired up with the endlessly energetic Zack Fair, though he takes his chipperness all in stride.
• Counter-Attack: His Scintilla skill has him drop into a defensive stance and retaliate with a flurry of slashes if struck, similar to Cloud's Counterstance.
• Cryptic Conversation: At the end of the first game, he leaves Cloud with confusing words which never go explained in-game after their final duel at the Edge of Creation.
  Sephiroth: Seven seconds till the end. Time enough for you. Perhaps. But what will you do with it? Let's see.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: His scuffles with Cloud at the end of Remake has him deliver this: Their first one-on-one duel has Sephiroth casually mocking Cloud the entire time and soon knocking him down. Even after having been seemingly beaten by him and the entire party, when they get to duel one last time, Sephiroth easily toys with him, countering all of his blows with Cloud hardly even making him move at all from his spot; and when he has enough, he instantly pushes Cloud back and disarms him. Notably, this is the only time that any work has Sephiroth ending the fight unquestionably victorious.
• Deadpan Snarker: While usually serious, he has his moments. Even after he goes insane, he retains a rather twisted sense of dull humor.
  Tifa: Man, I wish I could go on trips all over the world like you guys...
  Sephiroth: (Beat) "Trips?" I think you mean "business trips" - which are no fun at all!
  [...]
  Cloud: You're not real...you're...dead.
  Sephiroth: [in the smuggest, faux-surprised voice] I am?
• Death from Above: His Hell's Gate attack has him leaping into the air and stabbing the ground with his sword, creating large shockwaves in six directions. In the final boss fight of Rebirth, he replaces the shockwaves with an explosion of Whispers.
• Demonic Possession: As the Sephiroth Clones have fully succumbed to the control of the Jenova cells inside them, Sephiroth can not only control them at will, but resculpt their appearance to match his own.
• Didn't See That Coming: He has this happen to him four times in Rebirth, with each eliciting a different response:
  • The first time is when he attacks the WEAPON that's sheltering Tifa and, for once, he actually has trouble in dislodging the sword from the beast's body. He actually visibly panics a bit at this.
  • The second time is when he possesses a robed man and impales Tseng. As he gloats to the party that they will soon join him in death, Tseng shows he is Not Quite Dead and shoots him in the back. Sephiroth's face shows shock and disbelief right before his body dies.
  • The third time occurs in the forest surrounding the Forgotten Capital, when Aerith retrieves the fully charged White Materia Cloud received from her alternate self to replace the one that Sephiroth successfully depowered. Sephiroth calls the action poor form, proving a Sore Loser about having his multiversal schemes turned against him.
  • The fourth time occurs during the final battle, when Aerith, who Sephiroth had seemingly just killed, appears to fight alongside Cloud against him. Sephiroth actually admits that her appearance has thrown him for a loop and that he underestimated her.
• Dimensional Cutter: He can make portals by slicing the air.
• Dissonant Serenity:
  • When Cloud first "encounters" him, Sephiroth is casual and calm while standing in an alleyway that's gone up in flames. ^note This is all revealed to be a hallucination.
  • He's comically nonchalant about strolling into the Shinra building while ignoring most of the security, to the point where he's not shown to have even killed anyone until the President's office.
• The Dreaded: The mere sight of Sephiroth walking through the hallways of Shinra's headquarters causes Palmer to drop his tea in shock.
• Duel Boss:
  • Subverted during the final fight with him in Remake. Cloud initially faces him one-on-one, but then two of his teammates (depending on how much you used them during the preceding fight against Whisper Harbinger) intervene on his side.
  • In Rebirth a few of his phases as Sephiroth Reborn are fought with Cloud and Zack alone.
• Elemental Powers: In the third phase of the battle with him, he can change up his elemental affinity between Fire, Ice, Lightning, and Wind, giving himself attacks in that elemental but a weakness to the opposing element. After cycling through all four, he infuses himself with all four elements and gains resistance to all of them.
• Entitled Bastard: Despite all his declarations of godhood this is what he is at the center of his motivations. After learning his true origins, he considers the Planet and everyone on it his property by right. In Rebirth his pleas to Cloud to defy destiny and merge worlds to save the planet and its children seem less about concern for the fate of the planet and more about the universe continuing without him when it enters the cycle of death and rebirth.
• Establishing Character Moment: In this version, he makes his first appearance shortly after the mission to blow up the Sector 1 Reactor, and immediately proceeds to guide Cloud through an illusion he creates of a burning alleyway leading up to Nibelheim, and taunts him with his murder of his mother. Afterwards, he tells Cloud to run and live with his hatred.^note To rub further salt in the wound, the Ultimania makes clear that him telling Cloud to run and that he has to live is him repeating Claudia's final words to Cloud before she was killed It shows his crueler demeanor as well as reintroduces the player to his obsession with Cloud.
• Everyone Has Standards: When he discovers the testing pods for the Makonoids in the Nibelheim Reactor, he's absolutely livid with Tranquil Fury, expressing sheer disgust and hatred for what Hojo had done since it's absolutely horrific to put live humans inside pods filled with mako just to see how they mutate. Unfortunately for the world at large, this and seeing Jenova's name inside the reactor also causes him to have a "Eureka!" Moment at realizing he's similarly born to be a superhuman weapon through experiments too.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Rebirth demonstrates that for all his cunning and manipulation of Cloud, he doesn't quite understand him or his friends as well as he thinks. And this repeatedly bites him in the ass on several occasions.
  • He continuously gaslights Cloud into thinking Tifa is a Jenova copy, culminating in him attacking her into the Lifestream and eaten by a Weapon. Rather than break their bonds like his betrayals destroyed his, Tifa realizes that more than ever Cloud needs her and resolves to stay by his side. This doesn't deter him much, and afterwards Sephiroth begins playing the other side and making Cloud look like a puppet of his will to her later.
  • He thinks that the Chihuahua-world Aerith is only trying to get one last bit of happiness with Cloud before he kills her, thinking she had accepted her fate. That Aerith was actually using their meeting to give Cloud the White Materia so that his Aerith would have the power to save him. This blunder costs Sephiroth so much that he actually admits he underestimated her.
  • In the climax of Rebirth, he believes his efforts of corrupting the Planet through merging worlds of The Multiverse together is something the Planet wants, and that its utter cacophony of sound it creates is some sort of "ecstasy" at giving it that. When Cloud points out that it's the voice of a Planet in pain and agony, Sephiroth sighs, calling out Cloud for still "not understanding him" before attacking Cloud mentally again as if out of spite for being called wrong since he still can't understand the Planet even after everything he's seen and done against it.
• Evil Counterpart: Like in the original, he shows himself as one to Cloud and Aerith.
  • Like Cloud, he was once a SOLDIER, being stronger, more durable and faster than any normal human- as well as being proficient with a giant blade. In gameplay, this even is translated as both sharing similar moves. Furthermore, both want to defy fate, but Sephiroth does so for his own sake, while Cloud does it for the sake of his friend Zack.
  • Like Aerith, he has special magic powers granted by his lineage from a bygone era that stand out from regular Materia- his dark magic from Jenova when compared to Aerith's holy powers from the Ancients. Also, they both have the knowledge of the fate of their original counterparts, especially their deaths. However, he seeks to undo his fate while she seemingly resigns herself to it and accepts what is to come. In Rebirth both take Cloud on otherworldly journeys and use their powers to alter worlds to affect Cloud's mind, but where Aerith benevolently soothes his fragile psyche and has him take the White Materia across dimensions, Sephiroth uses his to fracture him and gives him the Black Materia as a ploy to show his domination of Cloud's mind.
• Evil Is Bigger: Downplayed compared to most examples. Sephiroth isn't a giant, but he is still noticeably taller and bulkier than the heroes, sans Barret. Sephiroth Reborn, meanwhile, is a giant, one big enough that an early part of the fight involves doing a Colossus Climb.
• Evil Is Petty: A number of things he does towards Cloud just to Troll him come off as this, though considering this seemingly makes him stronger, it's no wonder he goes out of his way for it. It reaches the point that after having killed Aerith, Sephiroth flicks the blood-stained Masamune at her and Cloud just to launch the blood off towards them and piss Cloud off further to try to get the intended reaction, mocking him all the while. He also commits yet another Mind Rape on Cloud when he's confronted on not understanding the pain of the Planet, as if actually being genuinely petty at being disagreed with.
• Evil Laugh: In Rebirth, he gives a haunting laugh after Cloud deflects his attempt to murder Aerith, only for a timeline distortion to seemingly reverse this and allow him to kill her anyway. He gives another one as he escapes after the final battle.
• Fallen Hero: As shown in Rebirth, Sephiroth was a veteran of the Wutai War and an all-around stand-up guy until he discovered Jenova at the Nibelheim Mako Reactor—which doubled as one of Professor Hojo's research facilities for creating monsters—and read Professor Gast's research notes on her discovery and the inception of the Jenova Project. After this, Sephiroth snapped and razed Nibelheim to the ground, killing anyone who stood in his way or even just happened to cross his path.
• Faux Affably Evil: Bizarrely, his treatment of Cloud in Remake is akin to that of greeting an old friend/rival more than the hated Arch-Enemy he is determined to destroy from before. He even expresses his wish for Cloud to run away and survive; however, given this is still Sephiroth and Aerith's own affirmations that he is just as evil as ever, it's quite easy to see his plans for Cloud and Avalanche are not at all benign in nature. His taunting of Cloud in the final stretch of Rebirth reconfirms that he is quite as nasty and narcissistic as ever, whatever affection he holds for him being entirely self-serving, treating him like a toy.
• Feather Flechettes: During the final battle of Remake's last phase, he can fire the feathers from his wing as projectiles which will stun the character you're currently controlling.
• Fighting a Shadow: He is killed at several points in Rebirth, only for it to be a Sephiroth Clone he possessed.
• Final Boss:
  • He's the last enemy the player faces as the party makes their escape from Midgar.
  • Ups the ante in Rebirth, where three different version of him (as confirmed by the Enemy Intel page) are fought, with the second version being tackled by Cloud, the party, and Zack in multiple stages.
• Flash Step: Could easily be mistaken for teleporting in battle, were it not for the motion blur.
• Gaslighting: In Rebirth, Sephiroth makes use of this to weaken Cloud's grip on his identity and his trust in his allies. He insinuates that Tifa is a Jenova copy until Cloud attempts to kill her in a paranoid fit, and then begins to cast doubt on Cloud's own emotional state, either calling him a hollow puppet or a deluded lunatic.
• Glass Cannon: Fitting Sephiroth's nature as a villain whose threat is mostly in how much power other people give him over them, he has easily the weakest defenses of any boss in the game: he's a simple Barrier Change Boss who's vulnerable to a wide variety of counters, goes into Pressured status whenever he takes damage, and his stagger gauge is extremely small. Much of the danger in fighting him is the scope, speed, and ferocity of his attacks causing the player to lose track of how to respond, with the final phase adding a countdown to add even more pressure. Subverted during his time as a Guest-Star Party Member, when he is a Nigh-Invulnerable Lightning Bruiser. During his proper boss fight in Rebirth, he is both stronger and more powerful and easier to pressure and stagger. If he is pressured, Sephiroth is far easier to knock around than before.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Rebirth shows that Sephiroth was originally a pretty nice guy as far as supersoldiers go, but discovering his "mother" Jenova contained in a Mako Reactor that had been used as a bioweapons laboratory by Hojo led to him worrying that he was something other than human. Reading Professor Gast's notes on Jenova's discovery—which incorrectly deduced that she was a Cetra—and the inception of the Jenova Project caused him to snap and go on a rampage to "rescue" her.
• Gone Horribly Right: Throughout the games he attempts to undermine Cloud's grip on reality and make him question all that he feels. At the end of Rebirth Cloud's grip on reality is so in flux that he completely disregards the fact that some version of Aerith did die in his arms and that Zack shows up alongside him in the final battle, flipping his manipulations around so much that it wraps around into being an asset for Cloud. Wisely, he decides to cut his losses and let Cloud stew on his desire to stop him so that his grip on reality remains Sephiroth's asset and not his.
• Gravity Master: At one point during his Remake battle, he uses a powerful Gravity spell to pin Cloud and either Aerith or Tifa to the ground. He then attempts to kill Cloud, but Aerith, Tifa, or Barret knock him away, cancelling the spell.
• Greater-Scope Villain: For Part 1, with Aerith even pointing out that Shinra is a minor issue compared to him. He isn't the Big Bad of the Midgar section, but he has his hands still involved, even if he only appears a few times. Like with the original game, once the heroes leave Midgar, he becomes the Big Bad.
• Guest-Star Party Member: In Rebirth, he's a playable party member during a flashback, and unlike the original game, he can be directly controlled.

H-Z

• Hates Their Parent: While it is ambigous if Sephiroth knows his biological father is Hojo, he has nothing but contempt for him, feeling he is a bundle of complexes taking over the work of a great man.
• Hellish Pupils: Sephiroth's pupils are catlike slits, as shown off in closeups of his face, evidence that he's not entirely human.
• Hero Killer: In the climax of Rebirth, he manages to seemingly kill Aerith yet again, just as he did in the original game's timeline by distorting time to force the outcome of his blade piercing into Aerith despite Cloud managing to block the killing blow. However, there's a lot of ambiguity on whether or not he truly finished the job thanks to the existence of branching timelines, and because Aerith is still shown to live in some form.
• Hidden Depths: While he mostly keeps to himself, he has a few notable traits and quirks he reveals once he lets someone get to know him better:
  • He takes absolutely meticulous care of his long hair. According to his fanclub (which may or may not have been started by Hojo himself), he uses up an entire bottle of shampoo and conditioner per day to keep it perfectly flowing. The shampoo is reportedly even scented with rose and vanilla!
  • Despite growing up in Midgar, he's appears to be a nature lover. He's awestruck by the beauty and serenity of Nibelheim's mountains.
  • He wasn't above playing incredibly, hilariously stupid games with Genesis and Angeal. One game involved placing a dumbapple on one of their heads, with the other two throwing swords at it to score points. Naturally, Sephiroth always won...which really makes you wonder how the other two survived losing with their heads still attached.
• Hijacked by Ganon: While he was always the Big Bad of Final Fantasy VII, the Midgar sequence focused on the battle with Shinra until the very end, when the party left town to pursue Sephiroth. In Remake, he instead appears in person to the party as they escape and serves as the Final Boss.
• Hijacking Cthulhu: He possesses some form of control or influence over Jenova and those infused with her cells.
• HP to One: His Signature Move, Heartless Angel, has him throw his sword to the ground, creating an AOE that will sap the health of anyone caught in it.
• Humanoid Abomination: Sephiroth's long silver hair and cat-like eyes are already major cues he isn't a normal human, but this game amplifies it. When Aerith first sees him, she sternly notes "everything about [him] is wrong," and tells the others that the Lifestream itself is furious at Sephiroth because of who and what he is. In battle, he's an "Unreadable" enemy — the same as the Whispers, Summons, and Jenova.
• Immortality Seeker: The only part of his goals that are clear is that he outright tells Cloud that he wants to live forever. Interestingly, Sephiroth also tells Cloud that he desires to have Cloud live forever too. Rebirth expounds on this, as the natural cycle of worlds means that even his own ability to avoid dissipating into the Lifestream is only a stopgap measure until the world is recreated. His plan is to hijack the Lifestream and create an eternal world where the only thing that exists is himself.
• Kamehame Hadoken: One of his new moves in Rebirth is the Whisper Cannon, a stream of Whispers thrown out of his cupped hands.
• Kick the Dog: For supposedly trying to have Cloud more on his side this go around, many things he does in Rebirth to further his agenda are so utterly cruel that he's gone beyond the original game's attempts to inflict a Despair Event Horizon and is seemingly doing everything he possibly can to psychologically break Cloud, knowing exactly how he ticks now. Cloud's Sanity Slippage kicks in earlier, is notably nastier, and works towards potentially worse consequences as a result.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: Not even the mighty One-Winged Angel is immune to making a rare strategic retreat. At the end of Rebirth's final boss fight, Sephiroth is forced down to a knee by an invigorated Cloud and a White Materia-empowered Aerith who has gained command of her own Whispers. Evidently not prepared to keep taking on both opponents in his current state, Sephiroth decides to fight another day with the acknowledgment that he underestimated Aerith.
• Laser Blade: Sephiroth Reborn is given a new trick in the ability to conjure one of these from his upper body, which he uses to perform his Zanshin.
• Limit Break: In Rebirth his Limit Break is Octaslash. He also has a newly upgraded extension to it, Octaslash Prime, which can be used with a Triangle press immediately after Octaslash.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Sephiroth possesses an eerie, otherworldly beauty that is emphasized by his long silver hair. It makes him look more androgynous than Cloud (who is also very pretty, himself).
• Magic Knight: Sephiroth's magical prowess is just as much as a problem as his swordsmanship. He starts out using the highest level of elemental magic, always opening with Firaga, and will prioritize using magic over his sword to trick players that mindlessly use Cloud's counterattacks and are expecting him to fight like he's usually been portrayed by aggressively rushing with his sword at the start, leading to many unobservant players getting smacked with a fireball at the start of the fight. As the fight continues, he gets to show off spells unique to himself as well as an entirely different form of Elemental Infusion that no one else showed in the game with new elemental spells to pack it all up. He's actually way more vulnerable to being put into a punishable state when he's using Masamune than when he's casually under-handing high level spells at the player.
• Make Wrong What Once Went Right: It's indicated that Sephiroth wants to defy destiny in order to avert his future defeat.
• Manipulative Bastard: Shows the heroes visions of Meteor destroying Midgar which convinces them that the Arbiters of Fate wanting to keep this future in motion means that they need to change the future. This leaves it possible for him to change the future in his favor.
• Master of Illusion: He torments Cloud with hallucinations and visions throughout the game, such as reminding him of Nibelheim's destruction. He also somehow hijacks Shinra's VR suite to show Cloud, Barret, and Tifa a vision of him summoning Meteor to destroy Midgar.
• Master Swordsman: Sephiroth's ability with the Masamune is legendary, just the fact he can use such a massive blade is proof of his skill. During the final battle in Remake, he deflects Cloud's attacks so effortlessly sometimes he literally has it resting on his shoulder.
• Mirror Boss: His movelist, particularly in the first phase, can make you feel like fighting an evil version of Cloud's. Appropriately because their strength comes from the same source.
• Momma's Boy: While it's not as prevalent in the main game, flashbacks to the Nibelheim Incident show Sephiroth still sees Jenova as his mother and seeks to conquer the Planet in her honor.
• Multiversal Conqueror: In Rebirth, Sephiroth reveals that he's no longer interested in just conquering the Planet and turning it into his vessel; he wants to conquer the Final Fantasy VII branch of the multiverse by causing all the disparate timelines to merge together.
• Mystical White Hair: Sephiroth's knee-length silvery-white hair is a product of the process that created him, and is evidence of his malevolent nature.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Referencing Crisis Core, his Octaslash limit break makes a comeback as a skill during the final boss fight, and is his Limit Break during his playable segment in Rebirth. Also, one of his attacks has him fire off the feathers from his wing as projectiles, much like Genesis did during his first boss fight.
  • Referencing Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, some of his lines — "On your knees." and "Shall I bring you despair?" — are quotes from the movie. He also manipulates corrupted Lifestream and sprouts his iconic black wing when unleashing his full power.
  • Referencing Dissidia Final Fantasy (2015), a majority of Sephiroth's attacks during the final boss fight and his playable guest party member segment in Rebirth take inspiration from his moveset in that game, with attacks such as "Telluric Fury", "Aeolian Onslaught", "Scintilla", "Shadow Flare", and his iconic "Hell's Gate" acting as they originally functioned with some minor alterations. Also one of his regular attacks has him fire three purple sword beams, a reference to his Zanshin Bravery Attack.
  • The opening cutscene of his showdown with Cloud at the End of the World parallels the cutscene that plays during the final showdown between him and Cloud at the end of the original Final Fantasy VII. Moreover, the final attack Cloud attempts on Sephiroth at the End of the World is clearly Omnislash, or at least some nascent version of it. Sephiroth effortlessly dodges every would-be hit, then scolds Cloud with a smug "Not yet."
• Never My Fault: Throughout Rebirth, it becomes clear that Sephiroth is willing to do just about anything to Make Wrong What Once Went Right, except change anything about his own bad behaviors. The result is that even when he overcomes old obstacles, his arrogance and inability to understand other people simply creates new problems for him, ranging from throwing away an easy victory by simply letting the Midgardsormr kill Cloud, to giving Rufus the opportunity to realize he's been had because Sephiroth can't help but come to him in Glenn's guise yet again just to gloat.
• Nice Guy: Much like his original iteration, before he went completely mad Sephiroth was well known among SOLDIER and the citizens of Midgar for his bravery, empathy and kindness. And despite his at-times aloof nature, was a good friend to other SOLDIER mainstays like Genesis, Angeal and Zack. Even Barret angrily admits that it sounds he was a stand-up guy before he descended into insanity as Cloud was recounting his "experiences" with him, making it just a touch harder to completely hate him.
• Not So Stoic: Whereas Sephiroth in the original game was practically unable to be budged from his position of self-importance after his Sanity Slippage, multiple cases in Rebirth actually catch him off-guard. He has to put on a tough gambit against Rufus and pretend to be Glenn, who is anything but stoic in his attempts to ruthlessly guilt trip the new ruler for his manipulations, and he genuinely falters during cases like his accidental summoning of Gilgamesh, when Tseng kills a clone he was actively controlling after he expected the Turk to be down and out, or when an empowered Aerith manages to catch him off-guard in the final battle when she joins Cloud to give him a much deserved beating. It's easily missed, but his eyes also widen in surprise when Cloud continues to block his infamous attack on Aerith at the Forgotten Capital, followed by Cloud summoning the strength to disarm him.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: From his cryptic musings, he implies that there are greater cosmic forces in the Final Fantasy VII universe ^note forces that may have sent Jenova and then the Meteor or did something even worse, and his main goal is to kill them all. And unfortunately, that just leaves the possibility that he wants to usurp them and become a god.
  Sephiroth: Our world will become a part of it one day. But I will not end.
• Not So Invincible After All: Throughout Remake and Rebirth, Sephiroth appears to be an almost unmatchable force, easily besting Cloud every time they fight and manipulating him all the while. At the climax of Rebirth, Aerith's control over the White Whispers allows her to aid Cloud and Zack in their battles with him, and shows up in person to aid Cloud when Sephiroth shows his true form. Sephiroth is so taken back by her actions that he admits to underestimating her and the following battle ends with his defeat, even forcing him down to one knee and retreating.
• Obviously Evil: To a bigger extent than in the original, who first appears in person during a flashback sequence where he was still a hero. Here, Cloud bumps into a hallucination of him in the middle of Midgar's streets, and he proceeds to guide him through burning alleys, all while his ominous theme "Those Chosen By the Planet" is playing. Coupled with his unnatural, cat-like eyes and black outfit, it becomes clear he is the villain even for those who have never played or heard of the original game.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • Averted in Remake proper. Despite being the trope namer he DOESN'T do this. While he does gain his black wing, he never turns into a giant monster and keeps a human form for the entire fight.
  • Zig-zagged in his final boss fight in Rebirth, where he transforms into Sephiroth Reborn (known as Bizarro Sephiroth in the original game in English) to fight the party after a round of battle in his normal form, but reverts back for the final phase.
• Perpetual Molt: Throughout Remake, a single black feather almost always heralds Sephiroth's presence. At the climax of the game, he also appears surrounded by dozens of feathers... Strangely, these feathers appear before Sephy has revealed his wing.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Surprisingly, rather than taunting Cloud overly about his failure to stop the collapse of the Seventh District's Plate and the death of his friends, Sephiroth actually displays him some sympathy in this case. He just calmly acknowledges his failure and while he does have a mocking tone, he tells Cloud in a surprisingly genuine way that through suffering, he'll get stronger, patting him and showing sincereness. Considering that he became like he was now because what he went through, you can see it as Sephiroth genuinely trying to motivate Cloud into accepting the pain and growing stronger.
  • In the finale, he reveals that while he still holds on to his dream of existing forever, he doesn't actually want to destroy Cloud anymore either. Seemingly to prove this, after defeating Cloud in a one-on-one duel, he spares Cloud rather than killing him. Of course, this could just mean Sephiroth still wants to manipulate Cloud to do his bidding, as in the previous version of events.
• Polite Villains, Rude Heroes: He's amazingly polite to Cloud in each of their meetings, treating him as though he's a friend. Cloud, on the other hand, is as hostile as ever thanks to Sephiroth's past villainy.
• The Power of Hate: His main goal in Rebirth, besides trying to enact the Meteorfall plan with more favorable conditions and converge worlds for him to rule over, is drawing in on the hatred and anger of the souls of the Planet so that he can more readily take control over it seemingly. To do this, he goes beyond simply antagonizing Cloud and the party, and pretends to be a new military leader of Wutai as a seemingly-revived Glenn solely to drive a new war between Wutai and Shinra to make sure there's as much death and suffering as humanly possible to help accelerate his plans.
• Power of the Void: His Boundless Void attack has him create a small black hole that will restrain one of your party members if they're caught by it.
• Promoted to Playable: Sephiroth is a fully playable party member in Chapter 1 of Rebirth, and later in an exceptionally tough gauntlet via Chadley's combat simulator.
• Psychotic Smirk: He's never seen without a contemptuously smug smile on his face.
• Purple Is Powerful: Many of the effects surrounding him and his attacks are covered in purple energy. Notably, purple is the only color associated with him and Jenova, as the protagonists and Shinra have blues. yellows, and red.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Sephiroth's been presumed dead for years, hence Cloud's shock at seeing him apparently alive and well.
• Screw Destiny: Sephiroth maintains that he wants to save the Planet by defying destiny, and scolds Cloud for failing to stop the Sector 7 plate from being dropped.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: In Rebirth, while possessing Cloud at the Temple of the Ancients, Sephiroth listens in on Aerith as she makes a heartfelt speech about how true strength isn't forged from hatred and obsession over the past, but the ability to forgive and to focus on creating a better future. Speaking through Cloud, Sephiroth disdainfully asks, "Are you done?" at the end of Aerith's speech, clearly irked by her words because she essentially just insulted the very essence of what made him who he is: a man so consumed by his obsessive hatred that he turned into a monster. A similar exchange happens in the final battle, where Aerith asks And Then What? will Sephiroth have at the end of his schemes but unending loneliness. Sephiroth's answer is to tell her to be quiet, as her role in them has ended.
• The Sociopath: As noted by Aerith, he isn't affected by the emotions of people around him at all. The fact he honestly asks Cloud to join him despite burning down Cloud's hometown and killing Cloud's mother and gloating about it speaks volumes to how little he understands or cares about others' emotions. However, it is shown in Rebirth that he wasn't always so detached; he detested Hojo for his experiments on people, and tried searching for the Infantryman swept away by the river on Mt. Nibel, and even expresses regret over his failure to find him. It was only after succumbing to madness as a result of his sudden obsession with Jenova that he became the monster he is now.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: Sephiroth never raises his voice beyond a calmly smug tone, even as he's telling Cloud to remember how his mother died or mocking him over his failures.
• Stance System: As a playable character in Rebirth, Sephiroth can alternate between his regular moveset and Retaliation Stance—which lets him parry oncoming attacks.
• Strong and Skilled: The main reason why this time the heroes can't defeat him even when he is still clearly not going all-out. In the original game, they defeated him in his Safer-Sephiroth form but that form was simply throwing his raw power at the party. Here, Sephiroth is not only heavily indicated to be more powerful than ever, but he is also fought at his human form, meaning that extraordinary power is backed up with an incredible amount of seasoned skill and veteran experience that one would expect from the greatest SOLDIER.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Sephiroth in a nutshell pre-Nibelheim. He outwardly gave the impression of someone who was cold, aloof and perpetually stoic. But in fact, this was largely because he wasn't exactly a people-person, and was a good man with a whole heap of internal conflict who cared deeply for his friends.
• Super-Soldier: Sephiroth was the premier member of SOLDIER's First Class prior to his disappearance, and his white hair and catlike eyes further distinguish him from lesser SOLDIERs like Roche and Cloud.
• Sword Beam: One of his unnamed attacks involves sending shockwaves of purple energy out with his sword slashes. The fact that they go unnamed implies that it just happens without any real effort on his part. This doubles as another reference to Dissidia, where throwing out sword beams was a staple of his moveset. The move is given a name in Rebirth as Zanshin.
• A Taste of Power: At the start of Rebirth for the Nibelheim flashback, he's playable like in the original game. Unlike the original, he's able to take damage and isn't a One-Hit Kill for threats in his path, instead becoming a Difficult, but Awesome parry-centric fighter that can continuously chain his attacks together like an utter damage machine, tearing Stagger bars up and getting insane damage if you can properly keep him from being momentarily stunned by damage. It still readily showcases that he's simply Always Someone Better to the fresh-faced Cloud five years prior, as in leagues beyond him.
• They Killed Kenny Again: In Rebirth, he gets killed several times by Cloud and the party, once by Tseng, and once by Rufus. Each time, it was just him possessing a Sephiroth Clone, so he treats it as a minor inconvenience before he gets another body.
• Time-Limit Boss: In Remake, drop his health down to critical levels, he'll summon Meteor and start counting down. If his countdown reaches 0, Meteor will Total Party Kill, incentivizing you to quickly defeat Sephiroth. In Rebirth, at critical health he begins firing dual Whisper Cannons and rotating in a circle while otherwise standing perfectly still, with his Stagger meter turning blue and beginning to drain on its own. If the Stagger meter fully drains, he instantly kills the party with a 9999 damage version of Octaslash Prime.
• Troll:
  • Most of the time he just shows up to mock and scare Cloud before leaving. Most of it is part of his plan, but sometimes he's clearly just being an asshole only because he thinks its hilarious. It's especially apparent when Cloud isn't the victim. The prime examples are him scaring the shit out of Palmer by just choosing to walk past him while ignoring him, scaring a bunch of kids with one of his creepy clones in Sector 5 before Cloud even showed up, or playing a silent "made you look" before teleporting and casually floating off to get Cloud to climb a big ladder on the top of the Shinra building and halfassedly jumping off with a smile when Cloud almost gets to the top.
  • It turns out in Rebirth that this is actually part of his motives; by drawing on The Power of Hate, he seems to grow stronger, akin to how in Advent Children the despair and pain of those infected by Geostigma empowered memories towards him. By being as much of a Hate Sink as he can possibly be, such as starting a False Flag Operation to ensure a bloody new war happens between Wutai and Shinra, or by trying to egg on and piss off the main party, every trope such as For the Evulz or Evil Is Petty serves his goals and empowers him further if he gets the corresponding reactions. Which is why he's actually somewhat annoyed that Cloud not seeing Aerith dead like everyone else is undermining that entire point.
• Unskilled, but Strong: In Rebirth his new powers and control over the Whispers have gone to his head, making him more reliant on displays of strength and Whisper attacks that are far easier to deal with than the more efficient but weaker moves in Remake. Concentrating more of his power in his wing and Masamune also gives him notable weaknesses to exploit, something far harder to take advantage of in the preceding game. As Sephiroth Reborn this is even more apparent, as all of his human form's moves are "enhanced" into versions that are bigger, slower, and far less accurate. Zanshin Profane's Sword Beam attacks are twice the size of the normal Zanshin's, but move with less than half of the velocity, and Hell's Gate produces a large glowing spot on the ground where it's going to strike that stops moving well before the attack actually arrives.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Played with in Rebirth. While Sephiroth is presented as even stronger overall than he was in Remake, his swordsmanship skills have begun to atrophy as he leans into his new powers instead, to his detriment. The final phase of his fight in Rebirth has very simple patterns to block or dodge, with reliance on excessively flashy skewering techniques and shows of force using Whispers as projectiles that leave him vulnerable, in contrast to the overwhelmingly fast and brutal assault he preferred in Remake. There are even times that he will abandon the Masamune altogether, giving Cloud and Aerith an opportunity to destroy it to weaken him. His wing serves as a similar weak point, when he once had no such weaknesses. As if to demonstrate, the final round of Rulers of the Outer Worlds is a copy of Sephiroth with no wing and using essentially the same tactics that he used in Remake, making him a vastly more difficult opponent than his Rebirth incarnation.
• Villainous Rescue:
  • In Remake, he stabs President Shinra from behind while he has a gun trained on the party.
  • In Rebirth, he defeats the Midgardsormr and rescues Cloud from drowning.
• Villain Override: He can assume control of Sephiroth Clones in order to perform tasks, such as assassinating President Shinra.
• Villain Respect:
  • In the original game, Sephiroth was infamously very dismissive of Cloud as a Spanner in the Works for his plans, only really manipulating him because he was an optimal pawn on the board at the time and then growing to hate him by Advent Children. Here, while he loves to Troll Cloud and get a rise out of him, he very personally knows why Cloud hates him so much, and seems inclined to bring Cloud up to his level in his Immortality Seeker plan, sparing him after their final battle to keep him on the "right path" to their future and offering a We Can Rule Together.
  • He also grows to feel this way towards Aerith in Rebirth after she continues to hinder him by helping the party and Zack with her magic during the fight against his "Sephiroth Reborn" form and later show up in person for his final duel with Cloud to back him up.

Sephiroth: I must admit... I underestimated you.

• Walking Spoiler: While Sephiroth's existence and evil nature has been a part of gaming's Pop Culture Osmosis for ages, his role in the Remake and its Cosmic Retcon makes it hard to talk about him in length, other than that he's in the game.
• Weapon Specialization: Sephiroth has always had a thing for katanas. As a teenager he wielded a regular-sized one called Nameless, while as an adult he wields a massive nōdachi called the Masamune.
• We Can Rule Together: In his own words, with how sincere they are being up to debate:
  Sephiroth: Cloud, lend me your strength. Let us defy destiny... together.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: While trying to persuade Cloud to join him, Sephiroth claims to be fighting against fate itself to preserve the Planet. However, Aerith disagrees with his way of doing so as it would involve sacrificing those living and believes the planet does not wish for that.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Already one of the most famous examples of the trope there is, Sephiroth still has his silvery-white hair and is still as cruel and self-serving as ever.
• Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?: Ironic, given that he infamously does exactly this trope to Aerith at one point. A Fatal Flaw of his is that he can't help but gloat and taunt the opponents that catch his interest, preferring to play mind games with them rather than just end them once and for all. This often backfires on him, as him playing with his food often means that his enemy or one of their allies has a chance to strike back at the opening and turn the tables.
• Winged Humanoid: When using his full power, he manifests a single black wing from his right shoulder.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: While it may not excuse his actions, the Remake continuity makes it hard to not symphathise with Sephiroth's backstory. Despite being isolated by his enhanced abilities, pre-breakdown he shows himself to be a good and heroic man with many redeeming qualities. Having no knowledge of the actual truth of his origins and parents due to being lied to his entire life (namely: his real parents, that he is human, and his abilities are a result of human experimentation in the womb to inject him with Mako and Jenova cells), he then stumbles across Shinra's research on Jenova with its incorrect conclusions and gets driven insane by the implications, with no one around who can correct him and assuage his worst fears about being inhuman. In fact, it's implied that even Sephiroth himself is actually aware of how far he has fallen deep down, considering how he mentions to Cloud about "through suffering, you will grow strong", that being perhaps the only time where he shows any kind of genuine empathy towards Cloud.
• World's Best Warrior: Just like in the original, Sephiroth is the greatest warrior in SOLDIER history, his accomplishments in Shinra's war with Wutai highly distinguishing himself as a hero, with it being said that he accomplished legendary feats that inspired countless people into joining the military. Being the most powerful man alive aside, he pretty much proves to also have the legendary combat skills to be the greatest warrior on the planet when he single-handedly fights in his human form against the entire party by himself and shows off incredible swordsmanship and magical abilities to hold them off while clearly not displaying all the abilities he had due to needing them in the future. Likewise, he proves himself to be truly the best warrior when he easily defeats Cloud, who has been able to defeat him numerous times before the remake, while still clearly toying with him.
• World's Strongest Man: Sephiroth is easily considered the strongest being on the planet to the point where most tall tales actually underestimate how powerful he is (rather than the other way around). He proves it in Remake, where he fights a five-on-one battle with the party harder than ever and holds his ground throughout most of the battle, while proving himself to be easily capable of handling Cloud one-on-one, giving him a Curb-Stomp Battle even when he did seemingly lose the fight with the party, and putting him and another one of his friends on the ropes until the complete party arrives. It was also evident he still wasn't fighting at full strength, as he makes it clear he still needs the party and Cloud alive for his future plans.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Subdued but still there in Rebirth, and twice at that. The first is when he realizes the White Materia is powered up again in this active timeline, after his use of the Whispers to strip Aerith's memories post-Remake seemingly depowered it. His remark of "Very poor form" practically comes off as being genuinely surprised and irritated that Aerith actually managed to use his own interdimensional tricks to swap the Materia and undo his plan, almost like complaining about a cheap move at chess. Then there's Aerith suddenly emerging from the Lifestream in the very final fight of the game to help Cloud, and they beat him this time, though in this case Sephiroth actually offers some Villain Respect towards her for managing this feat.