A MESSED UP ONE? It took a little inspiration from Silent Hill and stayed canon up until the Nibelheim incident. If you've haven't played Silent Hill 3 there's a line where one character says to Heather "They look like monsters to you?" and one theory is that some of the monsters are actually people, the player character is just so crazy that they see monsters. And Cloud is nuts. So 21-year-old Cloud wakes up in Cosmo Canyon repressing the memory of both Zack's death and Tifa's (you know how she looked like a goner?), hears Nibelheim never burned and is lured back to the town by that and Sephiroth's call. The situation goes waaay downhill as he becomes convinced the town is overrun with "monsters".

... He would have confused Sora.