Final Fantasy VII: Hojo & the Jenova Reunion Theory

After just playing the game to just past the point of Cloud and Tifa in the Lifestream, and once again watching the video of Zack and Cloud's escape, and obsessively typing over 100 pages of notes on FFVII's plot and dialog as research for a fanfic I'm writing, certain events have made me hypothesize a few things:

1) It is my belief that the events at the beginning of the game take place somewhere from one to three months after Cloud and Zack escaped from Hojo's lab (a rough guestimate of how much time it would take Zack to transport himself and a near-catatonic Cloud from Nibelheim to Midgar with few resources), and roughly one week after Tifa found Cloud at the Train Station and inadvertently roused him from his stupor, after which she promptly asked him to join Avalanche so that she could keep an eye on him.

And yet, Hojo acts perfectly stoic and unmoved when Cloud shows up out of nowhere. He doesn't seem at all surprised to see Cloud, when Cloud shows up to rescue Aeris from the Shinra Building. Which means either 1) Hojo has already forgotten his experiments on Cloud, or 2) Hojo remembers just fine, and isn't bothered in the least by the fact that Cloud escaped and seems to be functioning normally.

I suspect the second example. But if this is the case, then:

2) Cloud's escape from Hojo's lab was either:

a) A lucky break for Cloud and Zack, or b) Part of Hojo's plan to loose an unwitting Sephiroth clone on the world, and wait until Jenova took control of her new puppet to begin the Jenova Reunion. Hojo did believe that Sephiroth was dead, after all, and Cloud, as Sephiroth's killer, would seem the ideal replacement.

I am beginning to strongly suspect "b," for the following reasons.

The notes found in the Shinra Library seem to be taken by Hojo, as some sort of official report to Shinra Headquarters. They are also very misleading to the truth of what happened. But then, this is not surprising, since Hojo didn't seem very eager to share his true motivations for his experiments with his Shinra employers. I'll explain this in detail below.

It seems very careless that the Shinra soldiers would kill Zack, but leave Cloud -- even if Cloud was still helpless within the thrall of Mako poisoning. Indeed, that would make it so much easier for them to kill him. Zack fought back and, from the sounds of it, took out several soldiers, before running back to check on Cloud, and then being shot. That the soldiers would then have mercy on one of the fugitives they had been tracking, when Zack had just killed some of their own, makes absolutely no sense -- unless Hojo ordered them to kill Zack, and leave the other one alone.

The reports on the escapees from the library read as follows:

Escapee Report no. 3
Concerning their disposal.
    A      Shot for resisting.
    B      Escaped during A's resistance.

Escapee Report no. 4
Other
B's whereabouts is currently unknown. But we submit there is no need to pursue him, due to his diminishing consciousness. Awaiting further instructions.

This report is falsified, and I believe that it was falsified either by Hojo, or under Hojo's orders. We know that it is a falsified report, because the flashback clearly shows that, after the soldiers killed Zack, Cloud was lying helpless just a few feet away. He was in no shape to even move, let alone "escape during A's resistance." And the flashback shows the soldiers even walking up to Cloud and thinking about killing him, or at least arresting him.... but the red-suited commander tells them to leave him alone.

This behavior is very strange, considering what had just happened. The soldiers were obviously taking out their frustrations on Zack's corpse, going up and firing into it long after he was already dead. That they would then leave Cloud alive is just too bizarre -- unless you take into account that the soldiers were merely following orders. That alone would be the only thing that could make an angry, frustrated soldier, already furious with bloodlust, having pumped Zack full of lead, leave Cloud alone, whether he was sick or not.

So, why did Hojo want Zack killed, and Cloud left alone, if he allowed them both to escape? Unless, as I have already mentioned, he wanted Cloud let loose in his Mako-muddled condition... near Midgar. Where Jenova was being kept in the Shinra Building. Perhaps Hojo was trying to give the Jenova Reunion a boost. After all, he reveals at the Northern Crater that he thought the Jenova Reunion would take place at the Shinra building, but instead, Jenova had Sephiroth take her somewhere else.

Hojo's experiments seemed to succeed in nearly completely submerging Cloud's consciousness, leaving him reduced to nothing more than an empty receptacle for whatever strong will might choose to assert control. Hojo no doubt believed that his experiments would allow Jenova to take control of Cloud, as she had Sephiroth, and begin the Jenova Reunion.

What Hojo didn't take into account was that Sephiroth was still alive, so Jenova had no need for a new puppet. Because of this, the shock of Zack's death was able to stir Cloud from his stupor, and his mind, struggling to recover a sense of identity, adopted Zack's. It may even be that Zack's friendship lasted beyond death, or that part of his lifeforce, rather than returning to the Planet, actually entered Cloud, filling part of the void left by Hojo's experiments, and lending a solidity to Cloud's belief that Zack's life was his own, until his fateful tumble into the Lifestream at Mideel.

Amidst all this, of course, Cloud did end up being Sephiroth's puppet. I suspect Jenova allowed Sephiroth to control Cloud, thus allowing Sephiroth to believe that he had some sort of control over his own destiny, when in truth, he was just as much a puppet as Cloud was.

On to my next theory:

3) I have reason to believe that Hojo performed his experiments on Cloud ONLY. If he experimented on Zack at all, it was merely as a control for his experiments on Cloud. All good scientific experiments have a control, and I believe that Zack was Hojo's control. In other words, while Cloud was pumped full of Mako and Jenova cells, Zack was most likely given a placebo of some kind, so that a scientific comparison could be made between two men of similar physical make-up.

(And this leads to my completely different theory of why Cloud didn't make it into SOLDIER. I don't think it was because he was physically weak or incapable of fighting. He had enough determination to make himself physically strong, and to fight well. But he so firmly believed in his own weakness because of the traumas of his childhood, being rejected by his peers, and emotionally abused by the adults of his town, with the exception of his mother, I believe his lack of self-esteem was the major factor to his failing to join SOLDIER. This is why I think Zack befriended him. I think Zack wanted to help Cloud build his sense of self-worth, so that he might eventually join SOLDIER and realize his dream. Zack probably saw the potential there, and maybe even saw some of himself in Cloud, so he took it upon himself to take Cloud under his wing. But, of course, this is another story. One that I'm working on in fanfic form, as a matter of fact. Shameless Plug: All But Blood -- http://www.akane.org/fanfiction/allbutblood )

But back to the evidence for the #3 theory: The notes found in the Shinra Mansion Library note the following about the escapees:

Escapee Report no. 2
Description of the time of capture
    A      Former member of SOLDIER/Number ( ) No effect could be detected from either              Mako Radiation Therapy or Jenova on him.
    B      Regular/Number ( ) Reaction to Jenova detected.

I think it unlikely that Zack was such a superhuman that he was immune to Mako and Jenova treatment. After all, Sephiroth, the strongest SOLDIER of all, and The General to boot, was not immune. Indeed, it could be argued that the only reason Sephiroth was so powerful was a direct result of the Mako and Jenova cell treatments he received from the time he was in the womb onward.

Since Cloud eventually becomes as powerful (if not more so) as Sephiroth, and Zack ended up not being strong enough to fight off his attackers near Midgar, it makes logical sense, then, to assume that Zack was never really given Mako and Jenova treatment by Hojo during his imprisonment, beyond what he had already undergone as a SOLDIER First Class.

Also, in the flashback scene, when Zack breaks out of his cylinder, there is no expulsion of Mako gas. When he breaks out Cloud, however, Cloud collapses amidst a large expulsion of green Mako gas. Whatever green stuff Zack was floating in might have been anything. It could have been regular mist, under green lighting, with a "Float" spell cast on him. That's just a wild guess, of course, but whatever it was, I suspect it was another placebo -- but I don't think it was Mako mist, because it didn't have the same reaction to air as Cloud's container did.

As for why Hojo left Zack as the control for so long, it seems to me that part of Hojo's experiment on Cloud was to eliminate Cloud's sense of self, so that he could serve as a Jenova puppet. Therefore, not all of the experiment was physical -- I'm sure some of it was psychological as well. Cloud's self-esteem was already battered before -- but imagine spending five years in a tube, next to your best friend who is seemingly undergoing the same tests and procedures, but while your friend stays normal and healthy, you succumb to the Mako poisoning, and eventually sicken to the point where you can no longer even walk or talk. To Cloud, that would be yet another proof of his own weakness, his own worthlessness, not realizing that it was all part of Hojo's plan to essentially fragment his mind beyond repair, so that Jenova could easily take over.

4) Why didn't Cloud have a number tattooed on him?

After what I've discussed previously, I think the answer is obvious. Cloud was supposed to be the Sephiroth replacement. And, like Sephiroth, he didn't have a tattoo -- not because he wasn't important, but because he was the most important experiment.

We know that there were at least 13 of Hojo's Jenova-based experiments, including (obviously) Red XIII. My own research shows that, on the path to the Northern Crater, there were far more than thirteen Black Capes climbing the trail. Three died before Cloud and the others even made it the long procession of at least fifteen more.

Now, some people believe that Sephiroth is tattooed with #1. While I will certainly concede that it is possible that Sephiroth has the #1 tattoo, I have not yet found the evidence for it in my research. Which is not to say such evidence doesn't exist -- just that I haven't found it yet.

There is only one reference that I have found to the #1 tattoo, and that's when Cloud is in Corel, and the man sitting outside the shack says that he saw a man in a black cape with a #1 tattoo on his arm. What makes me doubt that this Black Cape with the #1 tattoo is Sephiroth, is 1) Sephiroth's clothing is long-sleeved, and he is often seen wearing gloves. If this is the case, how did the man see a tattoo on Sephiroth's arm?

Even with the issue Sephiroth's tattoo (or possible lack thereof) aside, I still believe that Cloud's lack of a number was very deliberate on Hojo's part. I think that it not only showed Cloud's special status among Hojo's other experiments, but it also ended up serving Hojo's purpose of making Cloud feel like he had even less of an identity. It certainly seemed to traumatize Cloud enough that, during his vegetative state at Mideel, one of the few coherent sentences he could form was asking about his number.

When Hojo calls Cloud a "failed experiment" at the Northern Crater, I believe he is -- yet again -- lying his ass off. He knows that Cloud is under Sephiroth's control, and yet Cloud is exhibiting the ability to fight some of it. The lies that both Hojo and Sephiroth spin at the Northern Crater, telling Cloud that he is not human, but merely a failure clone, "constructed" five years ago, are dictated by Jenova, and seem designed for the sole purpose of destroying Cloud's fragile hold on his identity. The lies work. Cloud begins to see the cracks in his constructed "Zack" past, and it is enough to make him believe that Hojo's lies might be true. This allows Sephiroth to pull Cloud's strings, and Cloud willingly gives him the Black Materia, after which he once again falls into the near-mindless state that Tifa finds him in at Mideel. It is only with Tifa's help, after they have fallen into the Lifestream, that Cloud's fractured psyche is able to gradually piece itself together. And even then, while Cloud seems to be mostly restored to himself, he still seems to have gaps in his memory, and of course he cannot remove the Mako and Jenova treatment from his own body. But at least then he has enough self-identity to battle whatever mind games Jenova might throw at him.

The tattooed "Black Capes" were unstable Jenova cell clones, mindless and fragile. Most of the clones stayed in the rebuilt Nibelheim until the Jenova reunion, though we know that one clone, the man marked #2, made his way to Midgar, where he ended up in the pipe in Sector 6. The man's villager-type clothing and appearance leads me to believe that the "clones" aren't clones in the traditional sense of creating a whole new creature out of the genetic material of a few cells, but rather that they are genetically altered humans -- perhaps the survivors of the Nibelheim massacre that Hojo used as supplements to his experiments on Cloud.

At some point, Hojo also managed to capture Nanaki, and give him the XIII tattoo. It is unclear how far Hojo got in his experiments on Nanaki, but they clearly weren't extensive enough to alter him to the point where he became a mindless Jenova receptacle. It is also possible that Nanaki's speceis had a stronger resistance to Mako and Jenova than humans. The experiments were enough, however, that when Nanaki was entrusted with the Black Materia, Jenova was able to play mind tricks on him, and bring him to Cloud's side, giving the Black Materia to Cloud, unable to hear Tifa's screams for him to stop. I believe that is the reason why, when Cloud decides to entrust the Black Materia to someone else, the game won't allow you to give it to anyone but Nanaki. Vincent might have been an alternative, but it makes sense to me that, with the experience Vincent has had with Hojo in the past, he would not be so easily fooled, and so Jenova had to use Nanaki instead. Also, it is unclear whether Jenova cells were ever used in Hojo's experiments on Vincent.

5) Why the heck is Hojo doing all of this anyway?

Well, as he confessed himself, right before he turned into a mutated Jenova monster, he injected himself with Jenova cells, probably right from the beginning, even from before the birth of Sephiroth. This made him a willing pawn in bringing about Jenova's will. She was probably whispering instructions to him from the very beginning. As pawns, neither Hojo nor Sephiroth knew the full extent of Jenova's plan until it played out before them, aided by their own actions, both conscious and unwitting.

Which, in the end, is why Cloud is truly the hero of Final Fantasy VII. He was supposed to be like Hojo and Sephiroth -- a mere puppet, a pawn in helping Jenova achieve her goals of destroying the Planet and gaining ultimate power. But in the end, in spite of all of his self doubts and failures both real and imagined, his will was strong enough to triumph over both his inner demons, and Jenova's threat.

Anyway, that's my theory. Comments, anyone?

-Krista
kristaperry(at)comcast.net
http://www.akane.org/fanfiction