Final Fantasy VII/Glitches and errors

Technically, Final Fantasy VII is not a perfect game. There are few odd glitches that can be found

The game also has flaws in story, cutscene videos and graphics. There are also debatable flaws (or are they flaws at all, just some ingenuity from the designers?) in the story; These shouldn't be discussed here but in story analysis section.

See also Trivia for possible weird things that are intentional.

W-Item bug
The W-Item materia has a flaw! During a battle, choose to use an item--the one you want to duplicate--and pick a target. Then choose another item (the same one or another one), but don't confirm a target. Cancel it, and the first item's count increases by 1. Do this over and over to easily get 99 of any item you can use in battle--megalixirs, greens, etc. Most players think you must choose the same item for this bug to work, but that is not true, making it possible to increase items you only have one of.

Aerith's ghost
When visiting Aerith's church in the second CD or later, one can spot a "ghost" of Aerith right when entering the room. The ghost will only appear for a split second when visiting the church for the first time.

The debate rages on: Is this a glitch or an intended feature? It is most likely a glitch, on following grounds:


 * I could have sworn seen several times people appear and disappear mysteriously when entering an area in FF7. My coffee-drugged brain also seems to remember seeing one of the kids in the church teleport mysteriously, so this area may be glitchy by nature.
 * It is actually possible to enter the church again in Disc 1, before starting to infiltrate the Shin-Ra building and rescuing her. She's ghostin' and poltergeistin' before she even died!
 * Moreover, if the designers really wanted to make Aerith appear here after her death, they could have done so with a little more noticeable effect. Now, the net effect is more spooky than memorable.
 * There is a child who says "Hey, where did the flower lady go?" if you go back with the Key to Sector 5.

Unless confirmed by Square as an intentional feature, we have to conclude it is just a glitch.

However, no one can deny that this is an appropriate apparition. Let's face it, seeing a brief flashback of poor Aerith by her beloved flower bed is quite touching. It is further made more appropriate by Aerith's appearance in the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, especially the end.

Flaws in FMVs

 * When the party is escaping from Midgar HQ, Tifa and Aeris steal a truck. If you look closely at the text on the side of the truck it says "Midgal" instead of "Midgar". (Curiously, there's a few misspellings of this nature in Advent Children, for example, one "Midgul" sign seen during the Bahamut Shin fight - intentional easter eggs, or honest flaws?)
 * The most debate-inducing FMV flaw: When Sephiroth descends from the skies, he's bare-handed. When he stabs Aerith, he suddenly has gloves. A simple continuity flaw, or an indication of something more sinister?
 * When Cloud gives the Black Materia to Sephiroth, it's, um, not black at all. Or pyramid-shaped. It's blue and round. (I don't suppose the game writers think Sephiroth is such a cool guy that he can summon the Meteor with a perfectly ordinary All materia?)
 * If you go to the Gold Saucer at the beginning of CD 2 (before Cloud recovers), there's still balloons as you enter and fireworks as you leave, even when Gold Saucer itself is closed and music isn't playing.
 * When the Shin-Ra rocket launches, there's a brief shot of the side of the rocket. It seems to be horizontally mirrored.

General graphics

 * In the PC version, during the Fort Condor battles distinct Playstation 'X' and 'O' buttons are displayed when interacting during the battles.

Background graphics

 * Outside of the ropeway station in Corel, a sign says "Amusement Park", but it's in Greek letters.
 * In Nibelheim reactor, a monster breaks loose from its tank, but when the room is seen the next time, the tank is undisturbed. (Or maybe Cloud just plain remembers it wrong, or was just imagining the monster...) [or maybe it was fixed after the Shinra team and Hojo came, perhaps? --Sarteck]
 * Sister Ray has its name painted on its side even before it is moved to Midgar and Scarlet gives it that name. You can see this name on the side of the cannon when Tifa escapes the gas chamber.

Geography and paths

 * Disc 1 ends in a scene in the house with the beds, Disc 2 begins from out door of the other house in the same screen in the Forgotten Capital. (What could they have possibly done in that house?)

Problems in Story

 * When Sephiroth (or actually Jenova) first breaks loose from Hojo's laboratory, he goes on and stabs the President in the back. The party comments that only Sephiroth can use this particular sword. However, it opens the game up for a small plot hole: Sephiroth is obviously seen later in the game waving this sword, but it's never actually explained how he got it back from the Shinra building! Maybe it was intended that Sephiroth actually released Jenova from the lab and they both ended up murdering all those people togther. Obviously there are multiple plausible possibilities for this to happen, but there's no direct answer...
 * When visiting Gongaga, we spot Scarlet and Tseng looking for a Huge Materia. The odd thing is, you can visit the place any time after escaping from Desert Prison, or in the CD 2. So depending on the context and time you see the cutscene they're looking for either the Black Materia or one of the four Huge Materias, even when they aren't necessarily needing them yet for anything! Either way the scene isn't wrong as such, it's just ambiguous.
 * No matter when you acquire Vincent in your party, he asks, "If I go with you will I meet Hojo?" and Cloud replies, "Dunno. But we're after him and Sephiroth. So, I guess sooner or later..." Even if you've already killed the guy.
 * When Cloud is finally rescued, he apologies about lying about his military career and ever reaching SOLDIER. When you go out right after that and talk to Yuffie, he rambles on and on about how he dealt with motion sickness in SOLDIER.

Translation Errors
(Note: Most of the translation bugs were fixed in PC version.)


 * When Cloud first meets Aerith after he falls through the roof of her church, the young girl tells him he gave her a fright, since he almost fell on her. However, since Japanese being somewhat ambiguous with its lack of any person endings for its verbs, Aerith, still referring to the church, proceeds to give Cloud a good telling-off about how scared she was when the church almost fell on her.
 * If you talk to the sick man in the slums, Aerith tells Cloud the following: "This guy are sick".
 * The player can choose "Off course!" or "No, way!" when asked if they want to continue in the Battle Arena in Gold Saucer.
 * What an anticlimax - Jenova's only line was a typo: "Beacause, you are... a puppet."
 * In one of the cliff caves you find an item labeled "last elixir", however there is no such item in the game and one will not appear in your inventory. Most likely this was a mistranslation of "megalixir".

Control Customizations
The game lets you reconfigure the buttons on the PlayStation controller, however there are times when the game designers seem to have forgotten about this and designed the game only to work with the default button map.
 * When maintaining your chocobos (feeding, releasing, etc.) you have to use psx: C to confirm, regardless of what you have mapped to confirm. If you have {psx: C mapped to cancel and psx: X mapped to confirm, when you are choosing options for the chocobo, psx: C will cancel the dialog and no button will confirm. You'll have to return to the default configuration to deal with the chocobos.
 * Several times the game tells you to press a specific button (such as psx: X), when in fact you need to press whatever button you have mapped to that function (in this example, whatever you have mapped to cancel).