Few moments in gaming were as painful to watch as Aeris Gainsborough being slayed by Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII. Her disappearance from the game at the end of disc 1 was abrupt and controversial, leaving parties underleveled and gamers with no love interest for the rest of the story.

Naturally, myths have emerged over the years about Aeris' fate, and whether or not she could be revived using white materia. Hoping to achieve finality with the rumors once and for all, Kotaku's Jason Shreier asked Final Fantasy Director Yoshinori Kitase about the rumor.

In response, Kitase said:

We did hear that there were talks amongst fans that if you use a bug in the game you can revive Aeris and she will be with you until the end of the game,” Kitase said. “It might be good in a fantastical story that you can revive the characters, but with FFVII, we wanted to really take another look at that, look at human life, and [make people] realize they don’t come back.” 

Interesting fact: In early storyboards Aeris wasn't killed. That changed when head writer Hironobu Sakaguchi's Mom passed away during development. Sakaguchi then decided that he wanted everyone to be just as sad as he was, and such was was the birth of the dark disc 1 finale.

R.I.P.