The original Final Fantasy VII was and is still a highly beloved and most popular title in the series. It had hours and hours of content for fans to immerse themselves in so much so that it led to the now thriving and almost as beloved remake.
During the production of the game, the developers had a lot of freedom to pitch as many ideas as they wanted. And while most of them made it to the final release version, a lot of content was understandably cut due to censorship, implementation, or the limited time the developers had to work with. These are just some of the content we could've seen playing the original Final Fantasy VII.
10 The Travelling Salesman
There was understandably a lot of cut content from the original Final Fantasy. However, among the many that stood out, one of those was a side mission whereby the player would deliver letters to the daughter and wife of a traveling salesman in Gongaga.
The salesman was also to reveal the existence and location of the Titan materia. Sadly, this was cut due to time restraint. While it didn't make the cut, we're left wondering how being a deliveryman would've worked out.\
9 Dual Casting
In Final Fantasy VIII, players are notably able to cast multiple spells per turn. It seems that feature was also to appear in Final Fantasy VII similarly as there is an unused dual-status effect in the game, which many have speculated to be a similar feature. While this didn't make the cut, fans still interested in the feature, got something similar with the W-Magic materia found later in the game.
8 Aerith & Sephiroth
Aerith & Sephiroth had very little communication or even much in common in the game, which no doubt made it much easier for Sephiroth to brutally murder Aerith in the first place. However, the developers initially had different plans for the two.
First, they were to be lovers prior to events of the game until the developers then turned them to siblings which would explain their similar hairstyles before the final version we have today.
7 Everyone Dies (Mostly)
Surprisingly, it seems the developers initially planned for all three members of the player's party to meet their untimely end in the game. Whoever was not given a parachute during the descent to Midgar would meet their demise leading to the game's end. The developers decided to leave this out, though, as it would cheapen the much more impactful death of Aerith.
6 Negative Regen Status
The regeneration status is a prominent part of the Final Fantasy games. In the classic Final Fantasy VII, developers initially had plans to take the mechanic a step further. Usually, the regen status is a useful thing to the player as it allows them to gain some of their hit points back every turn.
However, an opposite and unused version of this was programmed into the game files called “Seizure” and was to drain a character's hit points over time. This was cut, however, and a similar mechanic called Poison no doubt took its place.
5 Sephiroth As A Woman
Sephiroth is perhaps one of video game's most relentless, despised, and beloved villains. In the original Final Fantasy VII. Fans of the game will also know that the Sephiroth we see throughout the game are actually clones that are controlled by the original in the Northern Cave.
Fans will also know that Sephiroth is a hybrid with Jenova cells. Initially, the developers planned for him to partially transform into a woman due to those very cells. This, however, was scrapped due to an unknown reason.
4 Sephiroth The Addict
A much earlier version of Final Fantasy VII had a completely different story. For one, Jenova was meant to be a part of the brain that granted people access to superhuman abilities.
That Jenova element was able to be accessed by ingesting or injecting Mako into the body, thus prompting the idea of Sephiroth as a Mako addict drunk on the Jenova abilities, it provided him. This would ultimately lead Sephiroth to have withdrawal symptoms and succumbing to the pain.
3 The Honeybee Inn
The Honeybee Inn is undoubtedly a part of the game that had the most cut content of all. While it was just a location of the game where Cloud and his party ventured in to find some women's clothing in order to invade Don Corneo's mansion, the original plans for the inn were a lot more risqué than the final version. It had several unused rooms and cut dialogue that would've drastically changed the tone of the game.
2 The Ancient Forest
The Ancient Forest had a truly mysterious nature in the game that was hard to get into as it was to understand. The development of the Ancient Forest came out much differently than initial plans.
It was meant to be part of the main story of the game and not an optional one with unused dialogue in Bone Village explaining the nature and puzzles of the Forest and even an unused cave entrance in the game, which most have speculated leads to the Forrest.
1 Clones Of Red XIII
The developers of Final Fantasy VII initially had different plans for Red XIII. After he was given to Hojo for experiments, he was originally going have two separate clones created from him named Cobalt XIII and Indigo XIII.
These two clones were to chase down Red XIII and the party to prove their superiority over the original. Cobalt XIII and Indigo XIII were also going to protect Hojo before he was defeated.