In Final Fantasy VII, Tifa was the childhood friend and next door neighbor of Cloud Strife, an ex-ShinRa footsoldier who thinks he is his best friend. Cloud is helping AVALANCHE, an eco-terrorist organization that Tifa is a part of, work against ShinRa company and blow up one of their Mako reactors. However, it soon appears that ShinRa isn't the real enemy - Sephiroth is still alive. Tifa accompanies Cloud on his world-saving quest and meets and befriends Aeris, Yuffie, Vincent, Cid, Reeve and Nanaki along the way.

Again, in Advent Children, two years after the initial plotline, she is still running 7th Heaven and Cloud has started a delivery service that he runs out of it. Since Barret is off finding oil, she takes care of Marlene. They also seem to have taken in an orphaned boy named Denzel, all of whom are staying at the 7th Heaven. She is trying to help Cloud get over his guilt about Aeris's death, though, she isn't exactly succeeding. They also meet the three remnants of Sephiroth; Kadaj, Loz and Yazoo. Though she has no interaction with Kadaj and Yazoo, Tifa fights Loz in Aeris's church. She loses, however, and Loz takes Marlene with him back to the Forgotten City.

In DramaDramaDuck canon, Tifa was in a relationship with [Rufus ShinRa] for some time. During which, Wuya got him drunk and had sex with him. Tifa took it the wrong way, however, and thought Rufus had been cheating on her. She tried to break it off, unaware that Rufus had contracted Geostigma. So, when he was taken to Wuya's world and died of the stigma, she was both surprised and hurt that he hadn't told her, or hadn't trusted her to help him, because she still loves him very much (although she doesn't want to).

After his death, Tifa contacted him and tried to work things out. They were okay again, for a while, but then Rufus said some rather nasty things and Tifa dumped him on his ass again. Since then, she has been trying to get over him and is focusing more on her family, and is starting to recognize her feelings for Cloud.

When he was revived without his memory, she was both happy and upset. Happy that she could forget him completely and go on living, and upset because she was the only person he remembered without a stimulus. She feels extreme guilt about ending things with him still, but is too scared of being hurt again to try to make it work, or give him any information regarding his lost memory. Kadaj, whom she has recently befriended after they shared a (PLATONIC) moment together in the 7th Heaven, has been trying to convince her to give it a shot because he does not trust Wuya with him, but Tifa is too scared to do so and cannot sort out other unresolved feelings that she has.

Aside from being a pseudo-mother and bartender, Tifa-mun, along with Tidus-mun, are the Offical Roxas Flail-Makers of the AM Chatroom, and owners and operators of 'Roxasflails R Us'. She is also the only person who did not get the chocolate joke when it was initiated.