Sephiroth's cutscene with Jenova in Final Fantasy 7 was so scary it terrified one of the producers: "I felt like I was going to have a heart attack"

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Sephiroth in Final Fantasy 7
(Image credit: Square Enix)

There's plenty of horror strewn across Final Fantasy 7, to the point the scariest moments don’t all involve the literal vampire you can recruit. Sephiroth is responsible for most of them, and if you were to ask one of the classic JRPG's producers, a particular scene involving Jenovah stands at the top of the pile.

On X/Twitter, some Japanese developers shared the weirdest they've encountered while making games. Among the stories shared comes a little jumpscare Takashi Tokita, a producer at Square Enix, suffered while working on Final Fantasy 7 for the original PlayStation.

"When I was doing work on my PC during FF7's development, suddenly the Jenova cutscene started playing on the PS dev kit's monitor, and I felt like I was about to get a heart attack," he states, as translated by Automaton. Afterwards, he confirmed it’s the scene in Nibelheim, the flashback where Sephiroth encounters his mother in the Nibel Reactor.

It's a spine-chilling bit of storytelling, a nexus point for the villain's descent into rage and madness. I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it, especially the first time, where I got a surprise myself. I can only imagine how shocked Tokita felt.

The context of the technology helps set the scene here. This was early 3D, with the team at what was then SquareSoft tinkering on revolutionary technology. Nobody had ever seen cutscenes like these on a home console before, and now suddenly the dev kit's acting up?

I'd have thought the whole thing was haunted. Maybe Tokita did too, but decided to forge on regardless. I'm glad he did. At least it was confirmation Sephiroth makes an excellent baddie, since he terrified his creators in the real world too.

Square Enix director Naoki Hamaguchi considered giving Cloud Strife a more realistic sword for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, but decided JRPG fans "wouldn't accept it": "We stayed faithful to the OG"

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Anthony McGlynn
Anthony McGlynn
Contributing Writer

Anthony is an Irish entertainment and games journalist, now based in Glasgow. He previously served as Senior Anime Writer at Dexerto and News Editor at The Digital Fix, on top of providing work for Variety, IGN, Den of Geek, PC Gamer, and many more. Besides Studio Ghibli, horror movies, and The Muppets, he enjoys action-RPGs, heavy metal, and pro-wrestling. He interviewed Animal once, not that he won’t stop going on about it or anything.

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