[Final Fantasy 7 Original] The Mystery of Johnny

[Guile]

Hey folks. Started comparing some stuff between FF7 Remake and Original, and ran across something weird. Early incarnation FF7 weirdness? References to cut content? Johnny being large enough to contain many backstories at once? Something. Okay, let's start with backstory.

So, did you know Johnny is one of Tifa's old friends from Nibelheim? They can meet up in Costa del Sol and chat.



In fact, Johnny remembers Cloud, too.



Which makes it seem like Johnny is Tifa's friend who went and tried to make it in Midgar, who sent her (love) letters which you can read during the flashback.
Transcription here, as The First Letter: The Final Fantasy VII Citadel: Secrets & Mysteries


But that can't be right, because Johnny's parents are in Midgar. Cloud even mentions he's from Nibelheim to them, and Johnny's dad is like, 'Nibelheim? That was that place that was in the news the other day!'



So... what? Apparently OG Johnny is both an expat from Nibelheim, leaving his parents behind, but also his parents are living with him in his house in Midgar.

Thoughts? Anyone with more info would be appreciated. Or a way to help this all hang together in a way that makes sense.

 

[Bob's Beard]

OOOH, I don't like how fucky that is, I hatelove it!



....So the obvious answer - provided both of these cutscenes are actually real (I hope someone on the forum has saves near the triggers for either and can check) - is that this is a simple artifact of how hodge-podge original FF7's production was. That this is nothing more than a case of one hand not talking to another and each approaching a side character in mutually exclusive ways. That two portions of the Final Fantasy 7 team never found out about it because the scale of impact for their divergence was too small for QA to catch, and even too small for players to really catch in the pre-modern-internet days. If I had to put money down, I'd say it's this over anything else and that there's no real explanation (again, provided these are legit cutscenes, and I freely admit to hoping at least one of them isn't so it's not so jank).

But that doesn't stop us from trying to find a way to resolve this in absence of a proper explanation, as that's practically part of the spirit of this forum, innit?

And... I wonder if there's some backwards-compatibility info, in how Remake Johnny sure seems to be Midgar born and raised and absolutely not a childhood friend of Cloud and/or Tifa, what with the rather casual almost-killing by way of Cloud that Tifa functionally shrugged off. An almost-butchering of a childhood friend, that was not.

EDIT: ...Crazy hail-mary justification attempt, could it be OG FF7 being able to diverge in timeline and a 'non-canon' route has Johnny as a childhood friend, in a manner not unlike how the end of Remake shows the divergent timeline where Zack survives?

 

[AbeoLogos]

The obvious answer is Johnny's Midgar parents are paid actors in both iterations of the story. This neatly explains why, post-plate-drop in the Remake, Johnny seems utterly unconcerned with the fact his mother, and possibly father, almost certainly got crushed to death. There is established precedent of Shinra hiring actors to impersonate people related to Nibelheim; hiring actors to create a false persona distancing someone from Nibelheim is in no way implausible.

The question then is why does Johnny in particular warrant the effort, and perhaps more sinisterly, what is the price being asked of him... or perhaps by him in this facade?

 

[Guile]

The obvious answer is Johnny's Midgar parents are paid actors in both iterations of the story. This neatly explains why, post-plate-drop in the Remake, Johnny seems utterly unconcerned with the fact his mother, and possibly father, almost certainly got crushed to death. There is established precedent of Shinra hiring actors to impersonate people related to Nibelheim; hiring actors to create a false persona distancing someone from Nibelheim is in no way implausible.

The question then is why does Johnny in particular warrant the effort, and perhaps more sinisterly, what is the price being asked of him... or perhaps by him in this facade?

Click to shrink...

If you think about it, OG Johnny probably lost TWO sets of parents:
his Nibelheim set in the fire and his Midgar parents to the plate drop.

 

[Bob's Beard]

If you think about it, OG Johnny probably lost TWO sets of parents:
his Nibelheim set in the fire and his Midgar parents to the plate drop.

Click to shrink...

You know it's strange - OG Johnny had parents that each had unique models, yeah?

So why do we only see his dad in Remake, given how lavish they were in expanding things?

 

[MiskWisk]

This was explained as a translation error, not because Johnny had two back stories. He's not supposed to claim he is Tifa's childhood friend, nor Clouds. What he is supposed to say is:

"Oh, and you are...? It can't be! You're that ex-SOLDIER, childhood friend, and sexy playboy! A, and... a murderer!"

 

[Guile]

This was explained as a translation error, not because Johnny had two back stories. He's not supposed to claim he is Tifa's childhood friend, nor Clouds. What he is supposed to say is:

"Oh, and you are...? It can't be! You're that ex-SOLDIER, childhood friend, and sexy playboy! A, and... a murderer!"

Click to shrink...

That bit makes sense. Although... who told Johnny the crazy terrorist is a sexy playboy? Was that the rumor going around Midgar? ... Did Tifa tell him that?

Tifa does spend the entire day catching up with Johnny at Costa Del Sol, so if they weren't childhood friends in Nibelheim, were they just really good friends in Midgar?

You know it's strange - OG Johnny had parents that each had unique models, yeah?

So why do we only see his dad in Remake, given how lavish they were in expanding things?

Click to shrink...

'I guess they didn't have anything fun to do with her' is usually a fine answer, but the guys who did FF7R were clearly uber-nerds trying to wring every bit of nostalgia and joy from my bones. So I don't really have a satisfactory answer there.

 

[MiskWisk]

That bit makes sense. Although... who told Johnny the crazy terrorist is a sexy playboy? Was that the rumor going around Midgar? ... Did Tifa tell him that?

Click to shrink...

Johnny does see Cloud going around Wall Market with Aerith as well as going into the Honey Bee Inn so that could well be what he's referring too. I think he also had a crush on Tifa so he was jealous of Cloud as well.

Tifa does spend the entire day catching up with Johnny at Costa Del Sol, so if they weren't childhood friends in Nibelheim, were they just really good friends in Midgar?

Click to shrink...

I don't know how good friends they were but Johnny is one of the only people (we know of) who lived in Sector 7 still alive by that point. It could be anywhere from a well known regular at her bar to good friend really.