(Image credit: Square Enix)
There’s no shortage of horror throughout Final Fantasy 7, and it’s interesting that some of the most chilling moments don’t even revolve around the game’s notable vampire recruit. Instead, much of this unease can be traced back to Sephiroth. If you were to ask one of the original JRPG’s producers, a particular cutscene featuring Jenova would likely top their list of spine-tingling moments.
On X/Twitter, various Japanese developers recently opened up about their creepiest experiences during game development. Among these anecdotes is a startling story shared by Takashi Tokita, a producer at Square Enix, detailing a moment that gave him quite the scare while working on Final Fantasy 7 for the original PlayStation.
He recalled, “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.” This sudden fright occurred during the infamous scene in Nibelheim, where Sephiroth has a chilling encounter with his mother inside the Nibel Reactor.
This little revelation just highlights the eerie storytelling that Final Fantasy 7 is renowned for. I can still remember my own goosebumps during that scene, and I can only imagine how Tokita felt experiencing it unexpectedly.
It’s worth noting the context of the era—early 3D graphics and groundbreaking technology as the team at what was then SquareSoft was delving into uncharted territory. Players had never seen cutscenes like this on a home console before, so a glitch or hiccup in the dev kit must have felt downright haunted.
One could assume Tokita might have thought he was witnessing something supernatural, but he pushed through it and continued the development. What’s amazing is that this moment not only solidifies Sephiroth’s status as a terrifying antagonist but also reinforces the idea that even his creators were left feeling uneasy by the darkness unraveling around him.