All Worlds In FF7 Rebirth Explained

Though Square Enix may have been staunch in advertising Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth as a game that required absolutely no awareness of the previous game in the series, Remake, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Every aspect of the game, from the story it tells to the gameplay it uses is built upon everything that came before it rather linearly.

In fact, it wouldn’t be daring to say you would need awareness of every piece of media in the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7 to fully understand Rebirth. From multiple timelines and subtle hints to greater lore, it can be hard to wrap your head around what’s actually happening, and when. Let’s unravel it all now.

Updated February 1st, 2025 by Hilton Webster: With the formal introduction of a multiverse in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, the divind lines between timelines got a bit harder to define, what with them all crossing over one another so frequently. We’ve done our best to lay it all out clearly, and even added a handy table to clarify.

Though maybe expected, it’s only fair we warn you that this article will feature major spoilers for both Rebirth as well as the entirety of the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7.

A Brief Overview Of Every Timeline

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of every timeline and how they connect, let’s establish, in broad strokes, just how many there are. Some of them aren’t strictly present in the game, but are a chronological necessity for the story as it is to exist. Here are each of the four primary timelines that can be established:

Let’s discuss each of these in a bit more depth:

• The Pre-Remake timeline defines everything that happened before FF7 Remake. This includes not just the time before Cloud’s arrival in Midgar, but the events of Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus as well. In a sense, this is an ‘older’ timeline and so it has already come to pass, indirectly influencing later timelines. In the context of the timeline itself, it is strictly linear and self-contained.
• The Main timeline is the one we witness in FF7 Remake and Rebirth with Cloud and the party. While there are moments where we jump into the Dying Worlds and Beyond Time timelines, this is a mostly self-contained timeline. With the defying of fate at the end of Remake, however, it allows this timeline to be more susceptible to change than the Pre-Remake timeline.
• The Dying Worlds timelines are the sections with Zack. While we mainly see it in a single timeline with the Terrier Stamp branding, it starts to diverge more and more and Zack struggles with choices. It is a series of timelines with minimal changes between them because they are all running out of time do to Sephiroth’s actions, and as such Zack’s inidividual choices have little impact.
• The Beyond Time timeline is the place, well, beyond timelines. It is Sephiroth’s domain in a sense where he presides over the many universes of FF7. Though in a sense, Aerith also has access to this place Beyond Time, though avoids it to stay hidden from Sephiroth. It is seemingly also connected with the Lifestream, which possibly also exists beyond time, or is a single body across all of time.

When you delve into it deeper, you could split these timelines into plenty more, and it could be argued by the end of Rebirth that the Main timeline is starting to diverge into multiple separate universes as well. That’s not a question we’ll be getting an answer to until the third entry in the FF7 Remake trilogy, so the best we can do for now is hypothesise.

For now, let’s take a deeper look into each of the primary timelines and see what kind of answers we can derive from them.

The Everything Pre-Remake Timeline

When the Remake project started, there was an assumption that it was exactly that — a remake. Expanded by a large degree, yes, but still overall the same story and world and rules. But that is not so, as we have come to learn. It is, in a slightly complex manner, a parallel universe to that of the original game. Everything is the same. Until it isn’t.

In that sense, though the events of games like Dirge of Cerberus and Advent Children have not yet come to pass, we can still be aware that the events that led to them are still present. Conversely, this also implies the existence of the events of Crisis Core and Before Crisis, GACKT and all.

As for how relevant these will be to the Remake project, we don’t quite know yet. Allusions to their existence have been made though, such as the Genesis project and Vincent’s connections to the Turks.

So, while the characters have not seen these later events take place yet, the game is built around your own personal awareness of these events as they occurred in a parallel universe.

The Main Timeline

Prior to defeating Fate at the end of Remake, the assumption is that all timelines ultimately met the same end. Cloud and company defeat Sephiroth, the world is almost destroyed, and everything ultimately works out in a bittersweet conclusion.

In Remake, we even see Aerith get visions of this ending, with her connection to the Lifestream showing her memories of alternate universes that ended in the same way.

With Fate defeated, this timeline is no longer sentenced to the same end as all others, and in a ripple effect from this, every universe now has the freedom to choose its own end, rather than being condemned to the literal whims of Fate. This is the timeline in which the Remake project takes place.

With that established, it is important to remember that the entirety of Remake and Rebirth in the sections where Cloud and the party are controlled all take place in this one timeline. There are oddities at times in the events that characters may remember or witness, but the overall timeline is stable.

The Dying World Timelines

On the opposite side to the relatively steady Main timeline that Cloud and the party witness, we have the side chapters with Zack. These take place in Midgar in a universe where Zack survives his encounter from the end of Crisis Core, managing to defeat the Shinra forces that tracked him down and shamble to the city.

No official names exist for these many timelines, so the titles used here are only placeholders for the sake of clarity.

You may note, however, that this entry is titled the Dying World ‘Timelines’. Plural. Though a subtle touch near the end of the game, we see these universes fracture into many, many more as Zack is forced to make choices in his final days in Midgar. While everything we see with Zack is mostly in a single timeline, it starts to splinter when he needs to make a choice between saving Biggs or Cloud.

At this point, Zack makes choices that give birth to even more timelines, all of them slightly different from each other. In the metro, we see him first choose to save Cloud and dash off, a flash of white light engulfing the path he didn’t take. Next, we see him with Biggs, trying to stop him from detonating his bomb in the reactor. Another time, we see him sitting at Aerith’s slums church racked with indecision.

Each and every choice leads to a new universe. It is obviously impossible for Zack to have made all these choices in a single universe, with him instead making all of them across multiple.

Zack, of course, has no awareness of this occurring, though we also see that ultimately, all of these choices still result in each of these universes dying. They are doomed.

In fact, we even see one of these dying universes completely absent of Zack. Cloud wakes up in Aerith’s house, seemingly conscious of the fact that this is not his own universe in the Main timeline.

Aerith seems aware of this too, though seems like she doesn’t belong to any particular timeline. This timeline ultimately dies too, but not before Cloud is returned to his own, Holy Materia in hand.

The Existence Beyond Time

In the original game, Sephiroth had a rather specific goal — revenge, enacted through complete control of the Lifestream.

He would summon Meteor through the power of the Black Materia and destroy the planet, giving peace to the Cetra that were, in his eyes, slaughtered by humans. In Rebirth, at least from what we’ve seen, he seems to have the same plan albeit on a much grander scale.

Rather than control the Lifestream and thusly the planet, he seeks to control Fate itself so he can rule over the planet across every universe. We see this briefly in Remake when Sephiroth takes Cloud to a location that looks remarkably celestial and does the same in his final encounter with him in Rebirth.

This location, though never named, exists outside of the bounds of time. Evidence of this exists all around you, with Zack manifesting in this place despite actually being in Midgar. Even once they are separated, we see that the boundaries between universes are thin, with Cloud and Zack still being able to call upon the aid of the other in a limited fashion.

Beyond this, we see that all the damage exacted on Sephiroth in one timeline, be it by Zack, Cloud, or the party back in the Temple of the Ancients manifests in all timelines. He is everywhere all at once, with this Existence Beyond Time seemingly being the hub from which he springs.

An interesting addendum to this is that at the end of the game, Cloud can see things that the others cannot. He has the Black Materia, he sees the fractures across the sky, and Aerith appears to and speaks only to him, despite her supposed death.

In many ways, this implies that Cloud now exists across all timelines at once, or can at least see them all at once from within his own. Perhaps being in this Existence Beyond Time with Sephiroth has attuned him to the existence of other universes the same way Aerith was in Remake before they defeated Fate.

The Unifying Power Of Stamp

There is one thread across all of this, in both Remake and Rebirth, that links all of these timelines together. The unifying power of Stamp, the dog mascot of Shinra.

That sounds stupid, maybe even over-the-top, yet in a world ruled by an electric company with its own personal army, the ubiquitousness of a consumerist mascot would perhaps become a calling card of that world, and any deviations from it would be a sure sign that something odd is afoot.

In Remake, Stamp the dog is everywhere. Food, billboards, graffiti, you name it. They are everywhere, but they are always the same dog. Except in the ending sequence where Zack survives. Stamp suddenly has a new design, a terrier rather than a beagle. Many presumed this to be the indication of a parallel universe, which Rebirth confirms in every way short of directly saying it.

In Rebirth, especially by its ending sequence, we see even more variations of Stamp. Every choice Zack makes splinters into a new universe, indicated by a new Stamp design in every scene.

Even the scene with Cloud and Aerith in Midgar has a unique Stamp. They are the symbol of every world and the irrefutable evidence that each universe we see is different rather than a disjointed continuation of a single one.

Rebirth’s final cutscene gives us no merchandise in which we see Stamp, offering further ambiguity into what timeline Cloud stands in right now.

It is absolutely the Main timeline, though whether others are bleeding into it yet is still to be seen. Most likely, Stamp will be our faithful guide in the final outing of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake project.