The decision to kill Aerith came fairly early in development. When she, Cloud, and
Barret were the only playable characters, they discussed killing one of them off. Developers deemed Barret “too obvious” as in previous Final Fantasy games they had almost a tradition of killing off characters, and they were often like Barret: tough, last-man-standing types. It was also popular for heroes to sacrifice themselves for the good of the world or to save a love interest. The developers found this an annoying cliche.