Is Vincent Sephiroth's father?

JechtShotMK9 · Jun 27, 2017

I mean, if we go with the "Hojo is lying" approach, why stop there?

Maybe Sephiroth isn't even Lucretia's son! Maybe she murdered some other lady and kidnapped her kid and claimed it as her own!

Maybe Sephiroth didn't kill President Shinra! Maybe Rufus did it with a replica of Sephiroth's sword, and Palmer blamed it on Sephiroth because he was mad about President Shinra cutting funds for the space division?

Maybe Sephiroth didn't actually kill Aerith! Maybe the entire FFVII franchise post-crisis is actually a delusion made up by Cloud, as he sits in a padded room in the Shinra Mansion basement giggling to the wall?

Roger · Jun 27, 2017

Well, Vincent, Hojo and Lucretia all saw Sephiroth be born to Lucretia. In the months prior she was more then friends with both Hojo and Vincent. There's no reason to aquate the idea that Sephiroth is Vincent's son to the sky not being blue. But that whole corner of the FFVII story WAS explored further already, in Dirge of Cerberus. It's certainly not the angle they decided to go in.

The Twilight Mexican · Jul 1, 2017

LicoriceAllsorts said:
But don't you know that Cloud and Rufus are secretly half-brothers?

This remains my personal pet fanon. :monster:

Read it in a fanfic once probably 15 years ago and always loved the idea thereafter.

FancySycamoreTree said:
Now you can argue that Hojo was lying, but Square has since done little to nothing to suggest that he was, so I personally don't really see the point in insisting it could be canon...

Even more to the point than that -- and arguably more definitive than the in-game dialogue -- Square Enix has published book after book that continues referring to Hojo as Sephiroth's father.

T@ctic · Jul 15, 2017

LicoriceAllsorts said:
I think fans would like Vincent to be Sephiroth's father because:
- it would multiply the enjoyable angst by a factor of about a billion
- it would make Lucrecia look even worse
- Vincent is cool and Sephiroth is cool, whereas Hojo is uncool and we all know cool is genetic.

I'm pretty sure it IS actually canon that Hojo is Sephiroth's father.

wait wat, i've been off the game so long, how on earth could hojo be the father?

LicoriceAllsorts · Jul 15, 2017

He was married to Sephiroth's mother and they worked together to create a fetus for the Jenova project.

I suppose that, in game, since Lucrecia isn't actually dead, they are in fact still married.

Ite · Jul 15, 2017

Can a crystal-entombed undead woman marry a digital recreation of a personality?

Hojo: Science says yes!

Nonsense! Pretty soon people will be marrying their pets!

Hojo: Hehehehehe!
Reeve: Heh... heh.
Red XIII and Cait Sith: *look nervously at one another*

dz · Aug 25, 2020

I always imagined in Vincent's sin scene in DoC that the paternity was painted in a deliberately ambiguous way. In the compilation, Hojo clearly believes he is the father. But to me the subtext in this scene, it really sounds like Lucrecia is pleading to Vincent to speak up as the father. If he doesn't speak up, then in her mind, he considers their affair/her pregnancy a mistake and she is effectively going to make the decisions about her child alone.

As this wasn't explored further, I generally defer to Hojo-as-father canon, but I think they left it open enough that I'd buy the Vincent interpretation, were SE to ever explore that.

LicoriceAllsorts · Aug 25, 2020

Personally I think the story is better if Vincent is not the father, but chacun a son gout.

S.L.Kerrigan · Aug 25, 2020

Acro from ff7.fr was able to ask Nojima during an exchange with fans and the latter confirmed Hojo as the father.

In my opinion, if there is a strong link between Vincent and Sephiroth it is not a filial link.
But Vincent could have come back to life thanks to the memories of Sephiroth's fetus, under the influence of Jenova. :monster:

Lestat · Aug 25, 2020

How the hell did this thread become active again 0.o

dz · Aug 25, 2020

LicoriceAllsorts said:
Personally I think the story is better if Vincent is not the father, but chacun a son gout.

S.L.Kerrigan said:
In my opinion, if there is a strong link between Vincent and Sephiroth it is not a filial link.

Yeah, there is no hint of paternal instinct/regret from Vincent, his regrets are all focused on Lucrecia.

Cat on Mars · Aug 25, 2020

This theory exists only because nobody wants Hojo to get laid. Not even once. Not even hypothetically. :lol:

SE has made clear that it happened, though.
It is what it is.

Odysseus · Aug 25, 2020

I always figured the theory existed because people thought Hojo was too ugly to be Sephiroth's father. Some people only want bishi dreamboats, y'know? Also to give Vincent even more tragedy because he's not miserable enough. I guess it's also true that nobody wants to imagine Hojo having sex, as cat mentioned. cowards

S.L.Kerrigan · Aug 25, 2020

deltazomb said:
Yeah, there is no hint of paternal instinct/regret from Vincent, his regrets are all focused on Lucrecia.

And Lucrecia's maternal instinct/regret are all focused on Sephiroth.
Except in Dirge of Cerberus when Vincent comes to visit her, the only words she says/communicates him are: "I'm sorry".
Except it is not Lucrecia's words but Grimoire's (Vincent's father).
What is he sorry for and why is it so important Vincent should know that he is sorry...
when "I'm sorry" could naturally mean so much in a lost lover's mouth...

The words of a father to his son...
Hojo and Sephiroth...
Lucrecia and Vincent...

I can read a strong theme of mixed memories in the game.

We have the right to question what Vincent's place is in all of this.
I really liked the idea that Vincent would be Sephiroth's father even though it didn't convince me.

I remain convinced that a mystery lingers around Vincent, otherwise I will have a hard time understanding the very usefulness of his presence in the plot.

I'm waiting for the conspiratorial laurels :flipmonster:

Odysseus · Aug 25, 2020

If I'm being honest, Vincent is a really half-baked character. He was thiiiiiiis close to being cut from the game entirely, and all of his most interesting material was left of the cutting room floor, so what's left is a pile of half finished ideas. He's got a horror aesthetic, a vampire costume with a very distinctive gold gauntlet, but he fights with guns...? He has all these huge ties to the main conflict of the story, being there to witness the experiments that created the main villain, had a very personal relationship with his mother and father, but contributed nothing of substance to the plot. I just have a hard time believing there's any big secret tied to him, he doesn't have enough presence to matter. It's fitting his biggest failure is doing nothing.

S.L.Kerrigan · Aug 25, 2020

Odysseus said:
It's fitting his biggest failure is doing nothing.

I get your point but please let me have a little fun

It's fitting too that his last limit should be called Chaos. (void, disorder, nothingness)
It's funny how they persisted in insisting that he wasn't that much integrated/necessary.

Cat on Mars · Aug 25, 2020

Odysseus said:
I guess it's also true that nobody wants to imagine Hojo having sex, as cat mentioned. cowards

All right, guilty as charged. Even after making two Sephinova pics and drafting a whole comic about that cursed ship I don't want to think about Hojo having sex. Or anything else, for that matter. :mon:

Obsidian Fire · Aug 25, 2020

In the Remake, I can buy Hojo being a looker in the "scruffy nerd" kind of way. It's just... he's now over twenty years past that time. The people at Costa del Sol still think he looks good so....

It would be great if Hojo gets de-aged for the flashbacks to Sephiroth's birth... probably would at least look a lot more understandable why Lucrecia didn't mind getting with him initially.

Odysseus · Aug 25, 2020

Hojo actually did have a "young" model in the original. He had short hair, no ponytail.

dz · Aug 25, 2020

Odysseus said:
I guess it's also true that nobody wants to imagine Hojo having sex, as cat mentioned. cowards

They were both scientists.... let's assume it was a test-tube conception

Though Hojo seemed to have quite a way with the ladies in OG....

Cat on Mars · Aug 25, 2020

Do you guys imagine the epic meltdown Sephiroth would have had if he had learned by chance that Hojo was his father?
Rufus would have become president sooner, just sayin'. :monster:

deltazomb said:
They were both scientists.... let's assume it was a test-tube conception

This got me thinking.

If conception was part of the experiment, it was probably recorded...
...which means that at least one Hojo and Lucrecia's sex tape exists.

This remake can get even weirder.

Odysseus · Aug 25, 2020

deltazomb said:
They were both scientists.... let's assume it was a test-tube conception

As pleasant as that would be for all our brains, the reason Lucrecia is unaging is because the Jenova cells were injected into Sephiroth while he was still in her womb... so...

Cat on Mars said:
If conception was part of the experiment, it was probably recorded...
...which means that at least one Hojo and Lucrecia's sex tape exists.

This is probably actually true.......

Cat on Mars · Aug 25, 2020

Odysseus said:
This is probably actually true.......

Do you think that sex tape would be in the basement and Vincent knows? :wacky:

Odysseus · Aug 25, 2020

Cat on Mars said:
Do you think that sex tape would be in the basement and Vincent knows?

Hojo left it playing for Vincent after he was done experimenting on him, it's the first thing he saw after waking up. Why do you think he locked himself in the coffin?

Cat on Mars · Aug 25, 2020

Odysseus said:
Hojo left it playing for Vincent after he was done experimenting on him, it's the first thing he saw after waking up. Why do you think he locked himself in the coffin?

That makes sense. :monstersmash:

Is Vincent Sephiroth's father?

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