11-30-05 Note: This timeline has been contradicted by the information in "Final Fantasy VII: Ultimania Omega" which gives the range 25-30 years ago for the start of the Jenova Project and states that 23 years ago Vincent was experimented on. I will rewrite this section with the corrections as soon as I confirm a few things.
Physically, and according to the game manual, Vincent is twenty seven. Given the timeline of the game, it is impossible for him to be this young in actual years. In present game time, Sephiroth is older than Cloud, placing Sephiroth in his late twenties or early thirties. Vincent must be older than Sephiroth because he was an adult at the time of Sephiroth’s birth.
The age gap separating Vincent’s physical age of twenty seven and his actual time alive has been estimated to be about thirty years. The year estimate comes from Elder Bugah in Cosmo Canyon. He describes Gast’s discovery of Jenova: “Must’ve been about 30 years ago, when he found the corpse of an Ancient.” The Jenova project was started soon after.
The duration of the Jenova project is not revealed in the game. The project must have lasted for at least nine months since Lucrecia became pregnant with Sephiroth during the project and gave birth to him before the project ended. For exact dates on the events of the Jenova project, there is a timeline from the International version of Final Fantasy VII and the Final Fantasy VII Dismantling book, both of which are in Japanese and are sources I have never seen in person. Jennifer, a Tifa fan, was kind enough to post the timeline in English on her shrine Loveless along with dates she added from in-game information. In this timeline, the Jenova project begins thirty years before the start of the game and Vincent is twenty five. Two years later Lucrecia gives birth to Sephiroth and Vincent, now twenty seven, confronts Hojo and is shot. Hojo experiments on Vincent and puts him to sleep in the coffin, where he remains in ageless sleep for twenty eight years. Adding up Vincent’s physical age with his time spent in the coffin, Vincent has been alive for fifty five years.
It is hard to say that Vincent “lived” in the twenty eight years he was imprisoned in the coffin. Vincent slept and dreamed in his coffin with no human interaction for all that time. When considering how old Vincent is mentally, it is difficult to say whether or not the years he spent in the coffin made much of a difference. Vincent only has the life experiences of a twenty seven year old, but he has had twenty eight years of dreaming to subconsciously dwell on his life.
As a result, Vincent doesn’t fit the age he appears physically. He was denied twenty eight years of life experiences so he doesn’t fit his actual age either. Vincent’s twenty eight year absence from the world causes further problems. Many things have changed in that time; technology, social customs, and the people he may have known in the past are all different. Because so much has changed, Vincent has no life to go back to after he awakens. It is unlikely he would want to go back to the people he knew if he had friends and family that were still alive. Vincent probably thinks it would be better if they thought he was dead, rather than know the horror of what he has become.
It is interesting that Vincent did not physically age during his sleep in the coffin. Fans debated if this meant that Vincent was in a state of hibernation in the coffin and would age normally after awakening or if this meant that Vincent would never age, his body eternally twenty seven. I’ve always favored the latter, because I believe Hojo wouldn’t want Vincent to die. In the course of Hojo’s experiments Vincent probably wished for
death at some point rather than to live as the monster Hojo created. Hojo denied him that wish by making Vincent immortal. This viewpoint is supported by new evidence, which conclusively shows Vincent does not age physically. On the website for Square-Enix’s movie, Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, several characters have their profiles up. Because the movie takes place two years after the game, each character has aged two years. Cloud is listed as being twenty three in the film, whereas he was twenty one in the game. Vincent is the only character whose age remains the same, twenty seven, even after two years have passed. Officially according to Square-Enix, Vincent does not physically age.
Vincent’s age dilemma implies another problem not often addressed. If Vincent does not physically age, he cannot die a natural death. What can kill him is never discussed in the game, but it is implied that killing Vincent would be rather difficult. Vincent was able to survive asleep in the coffin for twenty eight years without food or water. In addition to this, when Vincent is seriously injured, he transforms into one of his other forms and is fully healed. There probably is some way to kill Vincent, but his supernatural ability to survive will keep him around for a long time.