backstory

Yeah, Cid doesn't have one.

As a Cid fan, this has always bothered me. Cid's backstory is a giant hole to the point that we don't even know where he was born. (Rocket Town wasn't established until the Shinra scientists decided to use it for their launch site, remember. Cid just ended up settling there later.) Still, there are a couple of things we can reasonably assume from what we know about him.

#1: he was part of shinra

Goes without saying, really, but Cid has to have had worked with Shinra for a fair number of years to get where he did. Cid built the only airship in the world, and the only other organization we see with any form of air travel is, well, Shinra, with its range of helicopters and the Gelnika. I could easily see Shinra as the place Cid learned to fly, as they'd be the ones with the resources for it. It's possible he grew up in a family of mechanics or other airship/plane engineers, but sooner or later, Cid turned to Shinra as a matter of course to pursue his dream of space. No other organization in the world had the funding necessary to take on that kind of endeavor.

There is one line about Cid having gone to Midgar to interview as a pilot, so one can assume it was with Shinra. It's a throwaway line when he's telling Cloud about LOVELESS, which I discuss more over here, and unfortunately there's no more detail than that.

In the same vein, I've always wondered just where Cid got the money to build the Highwind in the first place. I've seen the theory that Cid himself came from a well-to-do family batted around in fandom a few times, or that he had private investors, but I personally think it's more likely that it built it on Shinra's dime, which is why they ended up taking it from him when the space program failed. Not that Cid really would have been able to stop them at that point, no matter how the ship was built in the first place.

Rufus also suggests this himself — he specifically says that it was becuase of Shinra that Cid was able to fly in the first place. He doesn't go into detail, but it's plenty suggestive.

#2: he's a prodigy

At age 28 (the time of the rocket launch), Cid is the world's only astronaut and the man who built the only working airship. Sure, it's because he's the Cid of the game and that's just how Final Fantasy games go, but in-universe that's a hell of an accomplishment. Cid didn't build the rocket or the Highwind all by himself, but he certainly got there through a lot of hard work and elbow grease.

Plus, you know, he's literally a rocket scientist.

#3: ???

...And past that, there's next to nothing the extended FFVII universe gives us on Cid. Pretty disappointing. Maybe I'm biased (I am), but I've always felt that Cid gets the short end of the stick when it comes to more depth about his story. All of the other main party characters get a solid arc — even Vincent, an optional character, got an entire game — but Cid always got left out in the lurch. It does allow fans lots of leeway to come up with their own interpretations of Cid, which are fun, but I can't help but want to know what his story might have been in canon.

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