Profile

Tifa Lockhart was born in Nibelheim and grew up next door to Cloud Strife. Though they knew each other since childhood, circumstances prevented them from getting close, and Cloud was left to admire Tifa from afar.

When Tifa was eight, her mother died, and soon after, believing that her mother's spirit may have passed through the mountains, she decided to follow the path leading up the nearby Mt. Nibel. Her three closest friends, who were afraid to follow her up the mountain, abandoned her one by one. Cloud, however, who had been following them unnoticed, continued on after Tifa. When Tifa missed her footing on a rope bridge leading into the mountain, he ran to save her, but was too late, and both of them fell into the gorge below.

Cloud survived the accident while suffering no more than scraped knees, but Tifa was in a coma for a week, apparently from a class III concussion. Tifa's father held Cloud responsible for the incident, and his relationship with Tifa remained distant.

At the age of fourteen, Cloud asked Tifa to meet him one evening at the well in the center of town. Cloud then told her of his plans to leave for Midgar and join SOLDIER. It is later revealed that this decision was largely influenced by a desire not only to become strong enough to protect Tifa, but also to impress her as well. Tifa was both surprised and disappointed at Cloud's news; she asked him to promise that if he achieved his dream and that if she were ever in danger, he would come to her rescue.

When she was fifteen, Tifa acted as a Nibelheim guide for a group of SOLDIER personnel inspecting the mako reactor on Mt. Nibel. The group consisted of the first-class SOLDIERs Sephiroth and Zack Fair, as well as two Shinra MPs, one of which, unbeknownst to Tifa, was Cloud. After the inspection, the group returned to town, and Sephiroth stayed in the basement of the Shinra Mansion to read through the research notes left by Professors Gast and Hojo. What he discovered brought about a gruesome change in him. Without warning, he set fire to Nibelheim in the night and slaughtered the townspeople.

With her hometown in ruins and most of her loved ones dead, Tifa pursued Sephiroth as he returned to the reactor, only to find that Sephiroth had murdered her father as well. In a blind rage, she attempted to kill Sephiroth with his own sword. However, he proved too strong for her, and with terrifying ease he disarmed and inflicted critical injury to Tifa, very nearly killing her. As Cloud made his way into the reactor, he found Zack and Tifa both critically injured. After Cloud defeats Sephiroth, Zangan as well as people from Shinra appeared on the scene, Zangan took the grievously injured Tifa to safety, while Cloud and Zack were taken by Hojo for study.

Due to the severity of her injuries, Zangan carried Tifa to Midgar for medical attention, where he left her in the care of a doctor before returning to his travels. Upon recovering, Tifa set up a bar called "7th Heaven" in Midgar's Sector 7. There she met Barret Wallace, the leader of the Shinra resistance group AVALANCHE. Tifa joined his resistance faction, as she wanted revenge on Shinra for the events that had occurred in Nibelheim.

One day, Tifa found a barely-coherent Cloud sitting at the Sector 7 train station and took him back to AVALANCHE's base to recover. It was the first time she had seen him in seven years, though he would later say that it had only been five. Tifa soon realized that Cloud knew many things he should not have known, while apparently unaware of other things that he should have known. These abnormalities caused her great concern for his mental welfare, and she persuaded him to join AVALANCHE so she could be with him and watch over him.

Tifa, along with Cloud, is also one of the main characters of Final Fantasy VII Advent Children. Her role in the film sequel is mainly that of emotional support for Cloud, urging him to come to terms with the unwarranted guilt he places on himself. She also displays a great deal of concern for the children in their care, particularly Marlene and Denzel. Tifa takes part in a one-on-one battle with the new villain, Loz, and later joins in the fight against Bahamut SIN. Tifa's original length of hair in Advent Children was cut shorter due to the difficulty of animating its sheer length and color and lighting effects proved difficult while working with black hair.

Tifa was one of the only characters, along with Cloud and a few kids, that Advent Children featured in its very early stages when it was still meant to be a 20-minute special for the fans.

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