The people from Shinra had nothing but good things to say about the people of Corel; they called 'em good folk, the salt of the planet, the sort of people who kept the world running even when everything's going wrong all around them, and it sound real good at first... but Barret's smart enough to see the subtext behind it, the idea that yeah, they might be good folk but they're simple, they're easy pickings for the sophisticated folk from Shinra, the sort who'd work themselves to the bone for someone else's visions.

When it all went wrong - when the Shinra plant blew up and the city folk had abandoned 'em, when most of the village was dead and Barret was carrying a squalling baby girl in his one good arm as he made his way along the railroad tracks - he decided to show Shinra that they'd been right. Maybe they were the salt of the planet, but he remembered one thing from his old classes: if you put enough salt on fertile ground, then you ended up with dirt where nothing's ever gonna grow again.