Did Zack Die In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth?

Final Fantasy games rarely stop at one entry in any given world. They get remakes, sequels, spin-offs, reinterpretations, and so on. People will always want more of the thing they love, especially if that thing is Final Fantasy 7, which is now at a frankly obscene number of entries for a single Final Fantasy setting.

So much of why Final Fantasy 7 is so beloved is its characters, and in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, your love of those characters is the driving force behind the game’s existence. Zack, for example, is a character whose true value is only known if you’ve played Crisis Core and is frankly probably why you’re even looking up if he’s really alive.

Updated February 1st, 2025 by Hilton Webster: Zack is one of the most beloved characters in Final Fantasy 7, and the catalyst for so much of the game’s events. In Rebirth, he is brought back despite already technically being dead. But does Zack know that? Do we? It’s all a bit vague, but let’s do our best to figure it out.

Already a given, but this article will have pretty severe spoilers for not just Rebirth but the entirety of the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7. So beware of that before reading ahead.

Who Is Zack, And Why Is He So Important?

Let’s start this off with a crash course on who exactly Zack is and why, despite hardly actually appearing in the Remake trilogy so far, he’s positioned as such a world-alteringly important figure.

The First Soldier

Though far from being the actual first SOLDIER in lore (or having anything to do with the ill-fated mobile spin-off), Zack Fair is the first actual SOLDIER in the game we see, even if we don’t really know it. Raised in the village of Gongaga, far out from any major civilization, he left to join the Shinra military when he was only a teen.

Sound familiar? Cloud Strife, beloved protagonist of FF7, did the same. For Zack, this went much more successfully, becoming a SOLDIER in short order. Here, he made quick friends with fellow SOLDIERS Angeal Hewley, Genesis Rhapsodos, and famed SOLDIER First Class, Sephiroth.

SOLDIERs are humans genetically modified by Shinra to be almost superhuman in their combat capabilities but tend to suffer from Mako degradation as they age as a result of this modification.

From there, he took part in various operations for Shinra, including the attacks on Wutai and helping with many of Hojo’s experiments, though much of this was done unwittingly. He was, in many ways, just doing his job. He also met Cloud during his work, which will later lead to why he’s so important.

Meeting Aerith

During Zack’s travails as a SOLDIER, he came to know our iconically ill-fated flower girl, Aerith Gainsborough. In fact, it was Zack himself who gave her the idea of selling flowers after noting her infatuation with them and how exceedingly rare they were in Midgar. From that point on, they kept in touch, constantly sending letters back and forth.

Over time, the pair became inseparable, even if this was mostly metaphorical at the time. They occupied each other’s every thought. You may recall, both in the original game and in the first installment of the Remake trilogy, that one of the earliest things Aerith mentions to Cloud is how she knew a SOLDIER before. With retrospective awareness of this being Zack and future awareness of Zack’s own relation to Cloud, the scene is really all a tad cruel.

From this point, Aerith and Zack become inextricably connected in ways that quite literally after fate itself.

Zack’s (First) Death And Cloud’s Birth As A SOLDIER

Without reciting the entirety of Crisis Core’s plot, Zack becomes deeply embroiled in the SOLDIER project, and by extension, the Jenova project that led to Sephiroth’s existence and the later death of many of his friends. This comes to a head at Nibelheim, when Sephiroth himself became painfully aware of his own origins.

Removed from Cloud’s remembrance of the event is the presence of Genesis Rhapsodos, who elaborates everything to Zack and Sephiroth about exactly what Shinra is up to. This drives Sephiroth mad, eventually culminating in the destruction of Nibelheim. Another aspect forgotten from Cloud’s perspective is the death of Sephiroth, impaled with the Buster Sword and tossed into the Lifestream.

After this, Cloud and Zack are both taken by Hojo, alongside many of the villagers of Nibelheim, and injected with Sephiroth’s own cells to test the reunion theory. Except during much of this time, Cloud suffered from such extreme PTSD and shock that his mind fractured, with many of Zack’s memories becoming his own. After breaking free, Zack attempted to bring the two of them to Nibelheim and put them into the care of someone close to him.

This, however, ended fatally. Chased by Shinra as the sole survivor of the Nibelheim incident, they were caught on the outskirts of Midgar, with Zack gunned down, his final memories being of Aerith. His life was ended, and then it became Cloud’s mantle to take up, albeit unwittingly.

Yet, did he really die?

Zack And The Final Fantasy 7 Multiverse

Prior to the Remake trilogy, Final Fantasy 7 was a surefire thing. Even amongst all the extra entries, it was all additive. Crisis Core expanded on characters, Dirge of Cerberus continued the story, Advent Children was blatant fanservice. But it all took place in one continuity that didn’t inherently break anything pre-established.

Even the FF7 Remake, until the latter half of the game, plays itself relatively straight until the reveal comes along that this game is actually a separate universe from the original game. It followed on the same path until this exact point, when fate was challenged and defeated by Cloud and company.

So Zack is dead. Or is he?

In the ending sequence, we see Zack in a hail of bullets being chased down by Shinra. These are his final moments, and we are forced to watch them again. His death and Cloud’s rebirth. Suddenly, all the soldiers are dead, the bullets stop flying, and Zack and Cloud are safe. So what happened?

Simply put, fate was broken. Functionally, other universes didn’t exist prior to this point because they all followed to the same endpoint – the plot of the original FF7. With Cloud and company defying fate, every other universe had the ability to break free of fate as well. So Zack did. He wanted to win, and fate no longer demanded he die. He stood tall and marched his way to Midgar, his unconscious friend in hand.

But this is not the world we know. For Cloud to be in the state he is and for Aerith to act the way she does, Zack must be dead. This is one of the clearest indicators of the multiverse, but the next is something that sounds stupid, but Rebirth has went even harder on – Stamp the Dog.

A recognizable mascot seen throughout the game, his design is radically different when we see Zack at the end of Remake, a world in which he should not be alive. And that is because it is a different world, a world that took a slight deviation from the norm. Stamp is still a dog, but a different breed of dog.

So Zack is alive! But not in a world any of the people we know and understand are dwelling in.

How Many Zacks Are There?

While Remake ended with the soft confirmation that the universe has now forked with fate broken, it led to the impression that two universes existed now. Yet, based on the theory of relativity, the universes that stretch beyond our own are infinite in nature, altering from our own in infinitesimal ways, from the minute to the major.

For the majority of Rebirth, this doesn’t mean much. We alternate between playing as Cloud in the world following on from Remake and as Zack in a ruined Midgar in whatever alternate universe he now lives in. Right up until the ending, where more and more forks appear.

Until this point, we have seen Zack caring for Aerith and Cloud until he has to make a decision between saving Biggs or continuing on to Hojo to help Cloud. At first, he chooses Cloud, and a bright flash flight appears in the direction he didn’t take. That world’s fate is now sealed.

Yet when we see him next, he’s helping Biggs. Yet what little dog do we see in the scene? Loyal Stamp, bearing yet another design altogether different from what we’ve seen before. This continues on with each choice Zack makes, making a new universe with every choice he makes. Even indecision. And one by one, we see these worlds run out of time and cease to be. Functionally, this gives us infinite Zacks, each splitting off into a new universe with each choice.

And with them, Zack dies.

Is Zack Alive Or Dead?

The ending of Rebirth is a tumultuous one, quite literally resulting in a battle that exists beyond the limits of time. We see this in the grand finale against Sephiroth. He appears to Zack in the church of a dying world, to the party in the Temple of the Ancients, and to Cloud in his land beyond time. Yet Sephiroth exists in all of them at once, having melded with fate itself.

What’s exactly happening here? While never directly said, it’s Sephiroth’s plan from the original game, but for the planet as it exists in all universes rather than just one of them. Yet, as a result of this, as he is damaged in one universe, it manifests in them all. The party works together across all universes despite never even meeting.

In this sense, the Zack that fights alongside Cloud against Sephiroth in this land beyond time is quite possibly a different Zack than we play as in the Church while fighting Sephiroth.

As the game finishes, we see Aerith die. Yet, we also see her live. For some reason, Cloud is the only one aware of this. Except what we see of Aerith is very much true of Zack, as well. We see him die. We know that’s true. But with fate broken, that means he doesn’t have to die, not always. Not in every universe, even if he is dead in this one.

So, is Zack dead? Many of them, yes. Zack has died in the original continuity and that hasn’t changed. The Zack that Cloud knew is gone. But the Zack we play as throughout Rebirth? Well, some of them are dead, too. Those worlds ended. But for as many worlds that ended, there are just as many that lived, too. Sephiroth hasn’t won yet, so we can guarantee that timelines beyond his control still exist.

So both are true. Zack is dead. Many different Zacks are dead. Yet just as many Zacks are alive.

Does Zack Know About The Multiverse?

The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is being made with the awareness of players in mind. We know Aerith is meant to die, that Cloud is inadvertently impersonating Zack, that Jenova is not a Cetra. We know this, and the game knows we know this. We have seen the multiverse and the ways it all connects. But to the characters, their own universe is the only one they know.

So what about Zack? Sephiroth and Aerith are keenly aware of this multiverse, the duo waging a war against each other through the Lifestream across it all. Yet no one else seems to notice. Cloud, perhaps, after the ending might see this. But Zack? Does he even know he has died countless times?

Well, we can’t really say for certain. Cloud and the party defied fate, giving them the ability to see the Whispers and the extents of destiny, and Cloud specifically has traveled across the multiverse with Aerith’s help most keenly. In the final encounter with Sephiroth, many universes converge as Sephiroth manifests himself across them all, with Zack and Cloud getting to even briefly meet each other.

Most likely, Zack knows nothing beyond the extents of what each version of him has experienced. Unlike Cloud, who has had firsthand experience through Aerith and Sephiroth, Zack does not appear in any universe with their own Aerith and Sephiroth. None that still live, anyway. Zack may have an idea, an inkling of a thought, that something is happening beyond his own reality. But unlike Cloud who can see the rift in the sky tearing every universe apart, Zack likely cannot.

Zack, to his credit, gets to live in blissful ignorance. Aerith’s direct intervention to save him, however, implies she’s not done with him yet, and Zack may well be forced to come to terms with this multiverse, and his own copious deaths, sooner rather than later.

After Zack is returned to the church in the Slums, we notably do not see the sky. It’s very possible he has been dropped back into a universe separate from the one he knows, or one that is not yet on the verge of collapse.