Who is Zack in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth?

For those who are starting Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, you will see the black-haired character named Zack right off the bat in Midgar. While Zack appeared as an NPC in the original Final Fantasy 7, we never see his backstory there or in the remake. But he has an entire spin-off game, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7, that chronicles his life.

Crisis Core has actually been remastered, so you can play Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion if you want to learn about Zack’s backstory as a Shinra Soldier. The game is available on virtually every console: PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam. If you don’t want to play another game, then we recap what you need to know about Zack’s role in the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy below. (We mark spoilers as appropriate.)

Who is Zack Fair?

[Ed. note: Heavy spoilers for Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 continue below. There are also spoilers regarding the Nibelheim incident for both the original Final Fantasy 7, and thus Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.]

According to the events of Crisis Core, Zack Fair is a happy dude who wants nothing more to be a hero like “the great Sephiroth.” He followed his dreams, joined Shinra as a Soldier, and climbed to First Class. Throughout his journey, he encounters Aerith, the flower girl we know and love. They grow close, but — despite having romantic feelings toward each other — never are able to get together. He has a mentor named Angeal Hewley, from whom he inherited the iconic Buster Sword. There’s charming Turk who is constantly assigned to him named Cissnei.

Along the way, Zack meets Cloud, a Shinra lackey gunman, who failed to ranked up to Soldier. They bond over being from middle-of-nowhere towns outside of Midgar and grow close.

While most of Crisis Core is spent with Zack serving Shinra, he does become aware of the horrors of Shinra’s human experiments and of Jenova, the alien that fell to earth. He also witnesses Sephiroth’s descent into madness. Zack and Cloud are captured by Shinra’s own mad scientist Professor Hojo, who injects them both with Jenova cells in an attempt to turn them into vessels for Sephiroth to control. (The game officially calls these “Sephiroth clones,” though they’re not genetic clones.)

The experiments are deemed a failure, so Hojo locks Zack and Cloud up and freezes them. Eventually Zack breaks free and drags Cloud’s body out of the facility. This is when he’s faced with hundreds of Shinra gunmen and is killed.

Zack is known for being an integral part of Cloud’s story. After Zack loses to the soldiers, he entrusts his Buster Sword and his legacy to Cloud. When Zack hands him his sword, the Jenova cells in both of their bodies react and Cloud gets some of Zack’s memories, merging them with his own. This leads to Cloud’s confusion surrounding his own history and identity, as he often thinks he did things that Zack did.

What’s Zack’s role in Final Fantasy 7 Remake?

[Ed. note: Heavy spoilers for Final Fantasy 7 Remake continue below.]

By the time you see Zack in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, he’s in what would be his last moments, based on the original game’s timeline. In the 1997 Final Fantasy 7, Zack dies protecting Cloud against a swarm of Shinra guards, however, the last bit of Remake implies that there is a timeline where Zack lives. In this timeline, Stamp (the little doggy military mascot) is a terrier, rather than a hound, like how he is in Cloud’s timeline. (To differentiate later, I’ll refer to these as the Stamp terrier timeline — Zack lives — and the Stamp hound timeline — he doesn’t.)

Image: Square Enix via RajmanGaming HD/Youtube

Cloud and his friends defeat the ghostly Whispers, allowing them to change their destiny away from the original game’s storyline. After this happens, Zack beats all the guards and carries Cloud to Midgar, instead of dying. Remake’s cutscene even shows Whispers flying around Midgar, preventing Zack from possibly entering before Cloud and his friends take them down. However, the Whispers dissipate and Zack makes it through that swarm of gunmen, with Cloud in hand.

He eventually makes it to Midgar, and in the post-credits scene for the Intermission Yuffie DLC, you see him making it to the church and looking for Aerith.

What about Zack’s role in the original Final Fantasy 7?

[Ed. note: Given that we’re going to explain some of the twists in the original Final Fantasy 7, note that there are Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth spoilers below. Be warned if you’ve never experienced the original game.]

In the original Final Fantasy 7, we don’t actually see much of Zack. We get him in flashback cutscenes, especially during the Nibelheim incident. Since Zack was the original person who experienced the Nibelheim incident (not Cloud!), we see him going through it once Cloud’s confusion begins to clear up. Outside of this, we don’t really learn much about Zack. Most of Zack’s storyline was added in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 many years later.

What’s happening with Zack in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth?

[Ed. note: Very heavy spoilers for the events in Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth below. Do not proceed unless you’re OK with being spoiled for Zack’s part of the game up until the end.]

Graphic: Julia Lee/Polygon | Source images: Square Enix

The game opens with Zack in the Stamp terrier timeline, carrying Cloud’s body around Midgar. Tornadoes and tragedy just hit Midgar, and we see the gang — Tifa, Barret, Red XIII, and Aerith — getting carried into a helicopter. Zack saves Aerith and eventually takes her back to Elmyra’s house, but the rest of the gang presumably dies.

Throughout the game, we see random glimpses into Zack’s timeline. We see Marlene staying at Elmyra’s. Even more shockingly, we learn that the Biggs from the hound Stamp timeline was saved by Whispers and swept into Zack’s timeline. Without more explanation, the player is introduced to the idea of jumping through timelines and to other universes. Zack also notes that his sense of time is off, so it becomes somewhat unclear of when this is all taking place. People in this timeline are also predicting the end of the world, as denoted by a huge bright crack in the sky. Most people have somewhat come to terms with it.

Marlene starts saying some scary stuff, too: if Zack doesn’t cure Cloud, who is still sick and unmoving, a scary man with long grey hair will come and kill Aerith. Zack sets out to find a cure for Cloud, but he’s interrupted by a note from Biggs announcing that he’s gonna bomb another reactor.

In the final chapter (14), Zack is presented with two choices: to go stop Biggs or to go to Hojo’s lab to find a cure from Cloud. The timeline splits yet again, based on his decision.

When he heads to Hojo’s lab, he’s greeted with an army of Shinra men yet again. (We’re unsure what this timeline is specifically, we may have missed the showing of Stamp in this cutscene.) He launches himself into battle on a motorcycle.

If he follows Biggs, the timeline splits into one where Stamp is a pug. Biggs is gunned down by Shinra gunmen and Zack jumps into the barren reactor, noting that the world is ending anyway.

Image: Square Enix via Polygon

If he goes to neither, he’s now in a timeline where Stamp is a shiba inu (or some kind of similar looking dog breed — it’s hard to tell in the short amount of time we see it). He sits on the church steps to ponder his decision, but Sephiroth appears at the church and knocks a bunch of Whispers into Zack, sending him into a tunnel of light.

Zack then appears besides Cloud in the penultimate fight against Sephiroth. You fight together, until Zack is whisked away again back to another universe. He has to fight Sephiroth alone in a church this time. After winning, he notices the meteor about to crash into the planet and accepts it, but not before falling through the floor of the church and waking up in another church, though this one is undestroyed.

A lot of stuff is left kind of ambiguous. We don’t see what really happens to Zack in the pug timeline or the timeline where he heads into Shinra HQ. Are all these Zacks the same Zack, dying in one timeline, allowing him to jump to another? Is Zack still actually alive even? What timeline is he in now? We don’t really know. There may be a correct answer to these questions, but from just watching the cutscenes alone, it’s hard to tell.

Nevertheless, Zack will likely continue to have a role in the third and final part of the remake trilogy, so we’re probably not done seeing him yet. Hopefully the third game (or maybe future unannounced DLC) will answer our questions.

The world of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is huge, but we have your back if you need help. We have a beginner’s guide, list of side content rewards, and even an explainer on how to plan ahead for your Gold Saucer date.

If you need more nitty gritty guides like how to find things like Costa del Sol ziplines or where to find the Tonberry King boss, we have that, too. Or if you love Queen’s Blood, we have a card list.