History VideoGame / BeyondTwoSouls

* AdDissonance: When Jodie steps out from under the bridge in "Homeless", there is a huge banner on the other side of the road advertising luxurious buildings in a summerly scenery with the slogan "Your New Home Is Here" which stands in harsh contrast to Jodie's situation out there in the cold.

* AdDissonance: When Jodie steps out from under the bridge in "Homeless", there is a huge banner on the other side of the road advertising luxurious buildings in a summery scenery with the slogan "Your New Home Is Here" which stands in harsh contrast to Jodie's situation out there in the cold.

* ArabOilSheikh: One of Jodie's early missions with the CIA involves spying on several classified documents belonging to an arab sheikh. It's even possible for Aiden to mind control the sheikh himself.

* BlackTieInfiltration: Jodie's first field assignment with the CIA has her visiting a Middle-Eastern sheik's mansion during a formal dinner, pretending to be Ryan's assistant. While Ryan mingles with the crowd, Jodie excuses herself to the restroom and is required to use Aiden's powers to break into the shiek's office undetected.

* BrattyTeenageDaughter: Jodie develops into one in "Like Other Girls." She wants to go out with friends on a Saturday night, but is grounded by Nathan. She proceeds to throw a tantrum, play loud guitar music to annoy Cole, and use Aiden to break stuff. When that fails, she decides to use Aiden to possess Cole and have him sneak her out of the facility.

* ConvenientlyPlacedSharpThing: Downplayed. The only way Jodie can get rid of her bindings if she gets captured during "The Mission" is by using a piece of glass from a broken bottle laying next to her to cut the ropes. However, she needs Aiden to break the bottle in order to do so, something the guard watching over her conveniently doesn't hear...

** Flashbacks to childhood which reveal important plot points and character motivations.

* DullSurprise: Lt. Sherman, the sheriff that interrogates Jodie at the beginning of the game, is rather nonchalant about standing in the middle of his HQ with the CIA task force sent to detain Jodie slaughtered. Given the fact he's the sole survivor of an obviously incredibly brutal assault by a seemingly harmless young woman and a ghostly entity, he's probably suffering from a severe case of shock.

* ForegoneVictory: With the idea of more-organic failure states, there is no way to get an actual game over. If Jodie fails or gets captured, all that happens is an alternate escape scenario takes place which puts you back on the plotted line. You '''will''' beat the game. It is, however, possible to fail the last QuickTimeEvent and receive a bad ending.

* HowWeGotHere: Layered within itself. The story starts with Jodie surrounded by mysterious light and trying to piece her memories together. The first memory she accesses is heavily lined with flashbacks and makes no sense until the player goes through several other chapters.

* IfYouWontIWill: Philip, Jodie's foster father, uses this to try to get Nathan to tell Jodie that she's being left at the institute indefinitely.

* ImprovisedWeapon: Among the objects that are used as weapons in some fights scenes are a metal pole, a computer, a screwdiver and a hook on a chain.

** The attempted rapists of Jodie in the bar level, who are implied to do this regularly, and they only get their comeuppance at the cost of traumatizing Jodie due to the attempted rape.

** In a less glaring example, [[spoiler:the looming Beyond ending also differs slightly, depending on which of the supporting characters live or died prior to the Black Sun's destruction. Shimasani (the old Navajo grandma) will always be there as her death is unavoidable, but she can also be joined by her son Paul, the two hobos Walter and Jimmy, Jodie's mother, Cole and Ryan.]] Facilitating this ending is required for an achievement, though a serious case of GuideDangIt, especially when it comes to [[spoiler:getting Ryan killed]].

* NotQuiteTheRightThing: [[spoiler: In "Hauntings", Jodie channels the ghosts of Nathan's wife and daughter in attempt to provide him with closure and them with rest. This only results in him becoming obsessed with seeing them again, and eventually, deactivating the Black Sun rift]].

* PayEvilUntoEvil: Aiden is prone to this, in regards to those to antagonize or try to harm Jodie. One particular example has him tormenting and potentually murdering a group of Jodie's would-be rapists by either strangling them one by one or possessing the bartender and making him perform a [[PsychicAssistedSuicide Psychic Assisted]] MurderSuicide.

** She also launches one when Aiden takes offence at her dating Ryan.

* ReedRichardsIsUseless: [[spoiler:In the 'Alive' endings, Jodie is shown as living moderately well, despite her/Aiden's ability to ''cure drug addiction'' in the space of a few minutes. The fact that it'd be both ethical and extremely profitable to sell her abilities at, say, rehab clinics is never brought up. It's justified, though, in that the alive endings have her believe Aiden to be gone for good for a long while. In addition, Jodie just wants to be left alone, especially after all the shit and abuse she has gone through by that point. If she sold herself out as a miracle healer, she'd not only draw a crapton of unwanted attention, but would probably also reignite all the fear and prejudice she already had to put up with her entire life.]]

* ShowerScene: There are two shower scenes in the game with Jodie that are most notable for the resulting real life controversy. The first is in the "Navajo" chapter in an outdoors shower in the desert and the second in "The Dinner" as she prepares for her date with Ryan. [[ShouldersUpNudity Nothing explicit is visible in the game proper]], but a player who had access to the source code managed to manipulate the camera freely during the scenes and discovered that Jodie is fully modelled with ''visible nipples and genitalia''. Once an uncensored version of the shower scenes were released, Creator/ElliotPage threatened to sue Sony since he had never agreed to be featured nude.

* SympatheticPOV: Done rather cleverly in "The Dinner". For most of the game you can switch between Jodie and Aiden at will to accomplish several objectives, making them a perfect team. In this chapter this interactivity is dropped so you control either Jodie or Aiden in sequence. Subsequently, from Jodie's POV Aiden looks like an obsessive stalker trying to prevent her from having her own life, while from Aiden's POV Jodie looks like she's callously ignoring the soul who can't help being eternally tied to her.

* YouHadUsWorriedThere: After Jodie closes the rift in "The Condenser", she calls out for Aiden who doesn't answer. She worries that he may have been trapped in the Infraworld but after a few second he answers her calls, much to her relief.

* AbusiveParents: Jodie's foster father, Philip, is verbally abusive to her. He flat out calls her [[YouMonster a monster]], and goes so far as to call her an "[[ItIsDehumanizing it]]" and a demon while talking to her mother. At one point, he grabs her and almost starts physically beating her until Aiden scares him off. There are some implications that Philip is religious and that his behavior is influenced by fear of Jodie and Aiden's supernatural powers.

* RankScalesWithAsskicking: The Chinese commander puts up a much better fight against Jodie than any of the other mooks and thugs she throws down against over the course of her life.

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Averted. Jodie suffers quite a few injuries throughout the game and spends more than one level covered in cuts and bruises. By the end, she sports several thin scars on her face.

* BullyingADragon: An example with literal bullies: [[TeensAreMonsters The kids at the party]] apparently decide that assaulting a girl who personally demonstrated her connection to a powerful spirit was a brilliant idea. Jodie can choose to let Aiden demonstrate why this is ''not'' a brilliant idea.

* CollapsingLair: The Kazirstan base and [[spoiler: The DPA headquarters]] once their containment fields are deactivated.

* {{Eagleland}}: Type 2, considering how the CIA is portrayed in-game.

* ForegoneVictory: With the idea of more-organic failure states, there is no way to get an actual game over. If Jodie fails or gets captured, all that happens is an alternate escape scenario takes place which puts you back on the plotted line. You '''will''' beat the game. It is, however, possible to fail the last QuickTimeEvent and receive a bad ending.

* GildedCage: The DPA scientists let Jodie have a comfortable, personalized room, but there are cameras everywhere, the door is locked from the outside, and she isn't allowed to go out much without someone accompanying her.

* TheHeroDies: [[spoiler:One possible outcome of the game is Jodie choosing to go into the "Beyond" voluntarily after destroying the condenser. This also happens if she is killed by entities before reaching the condenser.]]

* IJustWantToBeNormal: Jodie wants to be like other normal girls her age, but it's just not possible with her abilities and with Aiden's presence in her life. This causes her to resent him at first.

* OneRiotOneRanger: Also Jodie. The first time a condenser breaks, they try sending in a small army of soldiers to fight through the ghosts and fix it...which fails miserably. Then they send Jodie in, and, well...

* RealityHasNoSubtitles: There are no subtitles during portions of the game where characters are speaking Persian, Chinese or Navajo since Jodie apparently doesn't know any of those languages, and the game is in her point of view.

** When she's homeless, she can contemplate giving a man oral sex in exchange for money... but then she backs down, at which point the would-be John attempts to take what he wants by force. Unfortunately for him, Jodie [[MuggingTheMonster has already undergone her CIA training at this point.]]

* ZombieApocalypse: In one level, Jodie investigates an abandoned lab where an experiment into opening a portal to the spirit world led to several malevolent entities breaking loose and killing everyone there. At one point, Aiden has to fight off a seemingly-endless legion of possessed corpses while Jodie tries to open a door.

* TooDumbToLive: In the "Homeless" chapter, a guy in a back alley offers to pay Jodie for a blowjob. Unless he's trying to get HIV on purpose (yes, people like that actually exist), this is... unwise.

* ProtagonistTitle: The "Two Souls" doubtless refers to Jodie and Aiden, who have been psychically tied together since birth.

* CreepyTwins: [[spoiler:We only find out that they're twins in the final chapter, but Jodie and Aiden can be ''very'' creepy, both individually and together.]]

* BerserkButton: If anyone willingly harms or tries to harm Jodie, Aiden can and will violently lash out at the offending party regardless of whether or not Jodie wants him to. He also gets pissed off when Jodie tries to harm herself.

* MightyWhitey: Jodie comes across as this in "Navajo". While exploring on horseback, she just happens to find an old burial ground, [[spoiler:gets Shimasani to speak for the first time in decades]], and is able to use her psychometry to perform a ritual that no Navajo has been able to in generations. All of this can end up saving the Navajo family from a hostile spirit that was summoned because of their ancestors' hatred for the white man.

* PosthumousCollaboration: Since composer Normand Corbeil died of pancreatic cancer in January 2013, Scottish composer [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIII Lorne Balfe]] took over. The game is dedicated to Corbeil.

* RapeAndRevenge: If the patrons in the bar attempt to rape Jodie, Aiden will intervene and kill all of them.

* RealityHasNoSubtitles: There are no subtitles during portions of the game where characters are speaking foreign languages, since Jodie apparently doesn't know any of those languages, and the game is in her point of view.

* SneakingSnacks: An amusing example in the "My Imaginary Friend" chapter, where little Jodie can have Aiden use his telekinetic powers to get her a cookie from the jar on top of the fridge after her mom told her no.

-->'''News Announcer:''' [[spoiler: ...and the international community had just announced its recognition of the election of the new president Gemaal Sheik Charrief... and now, sources report that he and all his government were assassinated in what appears to be an unclaimed attack.]]

* NiceJobBreakingItHero:
** [[spoiler:Under the CIA's orders, Jodie unwittingly assassinates a democratically elected president of a war-torn African country, believing him to be a warlord, which sparks outrage among the locals and the international community.]]
** [[spoiler: A young Jodie is able to help console Nathan's grief by channeling the spirits of the dead and uses his dead wife and daughter's spirits to talk to him. Unfortunately, this leads to him obsessing over the Infraworld to bring his family back to the point he nearly destroys the world.]]

* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The game originally released in 2013. "Black Sun" takes place in November 2014, with the epilogues all taking place sometime in 2015. [[spoiler:Jodie (or Zoey in one of the endings) has a premonition of a BadFuture taking place an unknown amount of years later.]]

* NextSundayAD: The game was released in 2013, but the chronologically last chapters of the game are set in 2014 (starting with Old Friends and ending with Prologue) and 2015 (Epilogue, minus the SequelHook).

* EvilIsNotAToy: The CIA repeatedly attempts to open rifts to the Infraworld in order to harness the power of the dark entities for military purposes. Each time, it backfires horribly and Jodie has to step in to stop it. Judging by Jodie's premonitions in the DistantFinale, they ''still'' haven't learned.

* IfYouWontIWill: Philip uses this to try to get Nathan to tell Jodie that she's being left at the institute indefinitely.

* ISeeDeadPeople: Jodie, with her ability to see spirits.

* MuggingTheMonster: Many people throughout the story attempt to mess with Jodie. Little do they know that they'll then have to deal with Aiden...
** This trope reinforces itself after Jodie takes her CIA training. After that point, she can do ''a lot'' of damage, even without Aiden.

* ExpositoryHairstyleChange: Used extensively. It's particularly useful, given the non-linear timeline.

** Aiden can sometimes wander off during certain levels, and it often hints or outright gives you tips for what to do or what is going to happen next.
*** At the bar, Aiden can eavesdrop on the two men playing pool. They discuss assaulting Jodie, giving the player an advance warning to leave the bar and skip the graphical scene.
*** When Jodie visits the mental hospital, Aiden can go into several rooms and be confronted by mental patients who can see him; one addresses Jodie directly, telling her to be prepared to sacrifice her life to save the world. Depending on your choices, [[spoiler: she can end up doing exactly that.]] Aiden can also find [[spoiler:the lab where Nathan is keeping his wife and daughter captive]] before this is revealed to Jodie and the player.

** In "Navajo", Jodie is repeatedly told not to go outside at night but will eventually exhaust all other options, and the only way to continue playing would be to do just that.

* DressingAsTheEnemy: Double subverted. Jodie and Ryan infiltrate the Kazirstan underwater base dressed up in stolen uniforms. Since the uniforms feature heavy coats and hats, their deception looks convincing enough to get them inside the base... at least until Jodie collapses after Aiden hits the containment field.

* AbusiveParents: Jodie's foster father, Philip, is verbally abusive to her. He flat out calls her a monster, and goes so far as to call her an "[[ItIsDehumanizing it]]" and a demon while talking to her mother. At one point, he grabs her and almost starts physically beating her until Aiden scares him off. There are some implications that Philip is religious and that his behavior is influenced by fear of Jodie and Aiden's supernatural powers.

* {{Anticlimax}}: Some found the last third of the game this [[DiabolusExMachina for]] [[AssPull various]] [[GenreShift reasons.]]

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: The Chinese commander puts up a much better fight against Jodie than any of the other mooks and thugs she throws down against over the course of her life.

* BlankWhiteEyes: A sign of Aiden's possession, although it might just be Aiden's target's eyes rolling up in the back of their head. Jodie also gains these when she channels a spirit to let them communicate with the living.

* BullyingADragon:
** An example with literal bullies: The kids at the party apparently decide that assaulting a girl who personally demonstrated her connection to a powerful spirit was a brilliant idea. Jodie can choose to let Aiden demonstrate why this is ''not'' a brilliant idea.
** No one can ever leave well enough alone and stop building condensers, even after previous attempts to connect the afterlife to reality annihilated hundreds of people. Even witnessing how destructive the entities really are isn't enough to stop the world's governments from continuing their Infraworld research, [[spoiler:resulting in an apocalypse sometime in the future]].

* CuteBruiser: Thanks to her CIA training, petite little Jodie fights like frickin' [[VideoGame/MetalGear Solid Snake]].

* DeathSeeker: Jodie becomes one later in the game. Hounded by entities and forced on the run in the middle of a harsh winter, she can optionally try to commit suicide, only to be stopped by Aiden. When she later falls into a coma, she's ''not'' happy with him for dragging her back to the world of the living again. [[spoiler:Choosing to enter the Beyond in the ending, even if all of her friends and loved ones are still alive, can be interpreted as a sign of how tired of living she has become.]]

* GeneralRipper: General [=McGrath=] wants to use the condenser technology and Jodie's powers to conquer the Infraworld, despite all of the CIA's prior attempts pointing to the fact that it wasn't going to work. True to form, [[spoiler:their constant attempts to break through are in danger of dooming the world twice over.]]

* [[OneManArmy One Woman Army]]: Jodie.

* PapaWolf: Most of the time, Philip is a verbally abusive Jerkass to his foster daughter. However, when he hears Jodie screaming in terror, he immediately busts down her bedroom door to help her. He can also appear genuinely regretful over leaving Jodie in Nathan's care, provided Aiden doesn't attack him.
* ParentalAbandonment: Jodie's adoptive parents hand her over to the government for testing when she's only 9.
* ParentalSubstitute: Nathan takes Jodie in after her parents cease contact with the DPA. Also inverted, as Nathan treats Jodie like a surrogate daughter -- even more so after [[spoiler:his biological daughter is killed in an accident.]]

* PetTheDog:
** Jodie's father, despite being a bit of a {{Jerkass}} and verbally abusive. When she's screaming in terror at night, he unhesitatingly busts her door down to help, and does indeed appear genuinely regretful over leaving Jodie in Dawkins' care (if Aiden chooses not to attack him before he leaves, that is).
** Aiden himself has his moments. He'll murder anyone who happens to be in his and Jodie's way, he'll wreak havoc in any situation given the chance to, and he'll drive Jodie to the point of tears on some occasions when he's out of control. But he also protects her, steals her cookies when she's sad, and nudges her favourite pink stuffed rabbit onto the bed when she's scared. One chapter even has Aiden doing a shadow puppet theatre for a young Jodie, in lieu of a bedtime story.

* {{Poltergeist}}: The spirit that Jodie interacts with, whom she addresses as "Aiden".

* TykeBomb: Deconstructed; Jodie is trained from a young age to use her psychic powers, with the implication that the CIA was already interested in recruiting her and waited until she was old enough. However, she does ''not'' choose to join the organization, and the guilt of being forced to kill people hangs heavy on her, crippling her self-confidence and personal relationships.

''Beyond: Two Souls'' is the third installment in Creator/QuanticDream's "interactive movie" game series, following their ''VideoGame/{{Fahrenheit}}'' (''Indigo Prophecy'' in some countries) and ''VideoGame/HeavyRain''. Its story, covering the span of sixteen years (and wholly unrelated to the two aforementioned games), centers on a young woman named Jodie Holmes (portrayed by Creator/ElliotPage[[note]]Page is still credited under his previous name, since the game and its remastered editions were released while he was still presenting as female[[/note]]) who tries to uncover the mystery of a strange {{poltergeist}}-like presence serving as her protector. Creator/WillemDafoe stars as Nathan Dawkins, a researcher who serves as Jodie's surrogate father. The central topic of the game is what happens to one after death. Like its immediate predecessor, ''Beyond: Two Souls'' was a UsefulNotes/PlayStation3 exclusive, though it received an UpdatedRerelease for UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 in November 2015.

In March 2019, it was announced that the game would be coming to PC later that year, exclusively via the Platform/EpicGamesStore for the first 12 months; Quantic Dream is self-publishing this port.

In March 2019, it was announced that the game would be coming to PC later that year, exclusively via the UsefulNotes/EpicGamesStore for the first 12 months; Quantic Dream is self-publishing this port.

** "The Party" will have Jodie locked under the stairs in the end, no matter your choices.

* AgeGapRomance: There's an optional romantic encounter between the protagonist Jodie Holmes and her CIA handler Ryan Clayton, who are respectively 25 and 38 by the end of the game. Notably, they first meet when she's seventeen years old and he's already a high-ranking agent.

* AgeGapRomance: There's an optional romantic encounter between the protagonist Jodie Holmes and her CIA handler Ryan Clayton, who are respectively 25 and 38 by the end of the game. Notably, they first meet when she's seventeen years old and he's already a high-ranking agent who's gone through a previous marriage.

* MercyKill: You have the option to kill [[spoiler: Jodie's irrevocably brain-dead mother when Jodie goes to see her.]]

** One achievement requires the player to kill off every single character that can be killed, then let Jodie [[spoiler:join them in the Beyond]]. While most of the deaths are fairly obvious and easy to engineer, [[spoiler:getting Ryan killed can only be done by failing to talk Dawkins down when Jodie meets him in the Black Sun chamber, then [[ViolationOfCommonSense resisting the ingrained reflex to throttle him with Aiden]] as soon as the controls switch to the latter. Only then does Ryan intervene by taking the bullet meant for Jodie and dying in the process.]]
* GildedCage: How Jodie lives during her adolescence. The scientists let her have a comfortable, personalized room, but there are cameras everywhere, and she isn't allowed to go out much. [[spoiler:In the finale, the government gives up on this and tries to put her in a coma.]]
* GunStruggle: [[spoiler: If Jodie fails to talk Nathan down in "The Black Sun" (or fails to have Aiden strangle him once he shoots her), Ryan will show up and try to wrest the gun from him. Unlike most incidents of this trope, this results in them ''both'' being fatally shot.]]
* HandyCuffs: First averted, and then played straight during the "hunted" level. Jodie can get arrested three different times if the player messes up during the chase scenes. The first time, she ends up with her hands cuffed behind her back and locked up in a small room whose door is being watched over by a policemen, thus making her escape complicated and downright impossible without resorting to help from Aiden, the supernatural entity that is linked to Jodie. However, if she gets recaptured later, the police will simply handcuff her hands in front of her, allowing the girl to easily strangle an officer. One has to wonder why they decided to get sloppy with precautions only after she managed to escape her restraints the first time.
* TheHeroDies: [[spoiler:One possible outcome of the game is Jodie choosing to go into the "Beyond" voluntarily after destroying the condenser, rather than being separated from Aiden.]]
* HealingHands: To an outsider, it ''seems'' like Jodie has this power. In reality, Aiden is the one doing the actual healing.
* HellishCopter: During Jodie's escape from police and SWAT teams, a helicopter can occasionally be heard and seen circling above. Depending on how the player tackles the following scenes, it gets less than a minute of screen time prior to its unscheduled explosive disassembly on the ground (and right in the middle of its comrades to boot).
* HomelessHero: The chapter [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Homeless.]]
* HowWeGotHere: Layered within itself. The story starts with Jodie surrounded by mysterious light and trying to piece her memories together. The first memory she accesses is heavily-lined with flashbacks (within the flashback), and makes no sense until the player goes through several other chapters.
* ICannotSelfTerminate: Jodie, although involuntarily - every time she attempts to take her own life, Aiden will angrily intervene. In the "Homeless" chapter, Jodie can attempt to jump off a ledge, or slit her wrists. Both times Aiden will stop her. It's clear that Aiden is trying to keep her alive at all costs, which is something that Jodie later [[ChekhovsGun exploits to save her friends.]] Also happens in "The Mission", where Jodie can attempt to shoot herself in the head before Aiden stops her.
* IfYouWontIWill: Jodie's dad uses this to try to get Nathan to tell Jodie that they're leaving her at the institute indefinitely.
* ImpromptuTracheotomy: During the "The Condenser" mission, Jodie impales a possessed scientist through the neck with a metal pole... which does little more than ''annoy'' him.

** Creator/ElliotPage as Jodie and Willem Dafoe as Dawkins.
** A couple of other examples (and one that is a MythologyGag to ''VideoGame/HeavyRain'') is the sheriff from the opening, who is the spitting image of Paco from ''Heavy Rain'', and by extension, his voice actor David Gasman; and General [=McGrath=], who, like the sheriff, has his appearance based off both his voice actor and a ''Heavy Rain'' character, his being Doctor Baker.

* IJustWantToBeNormal: Jodie wants to be like other normal girls her age but that's just not possible.

* JustFollowingOrders: May as well be Ryan's catchphrase.

** General [=McGrath=], for his part, earns a solid punch to the face from Ryan for attempting to [[spoiler:put Jodie in a permanent coma as well as trying to "conquer" the Infraworld despite the apocalyptic levels of danger involved, but he survives the events of "The Black Sun" thanks to the efforts of Jodie and her friends, and it's heavily implied in the epilogues that he, along with the CIA, is still hard at work on trying to fully access the other side, having learned nothing from the experience.]]
** [[spoiler: To a greater extent, while some souls linger in reality for a number of reasons, most of those who die seem to pass on directly to the Infraworld, which, despite the fact that it contains certain malicious entities, is mostly portrayed as a paradise without limits. Meaning that the majority of the dead end up in what is essentially heaven, regardless of how good or evil they may have been in life.]]

** Soon after burning down the building where Tuesday has given birth and beating Jodie into a coma, the thugs are arrested because of the smell of gas on their clothes.
** In a more positive example, [[WhatYouAreInTheDark Stan--despite being homeless--takes Jodie in when he sees her collapsed on a sidewalk.]] This act of compassion really pays off.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Various psychic abilities are real, as are ghosts, [[spoiler:and the asylum level implies precognitives may also exist.]] Apparently Jodie wasn't the first psychic to be born--just the first to be recognized as legitimate and not insane. [[spoiler:And to be discovered outside the government conspiracy.]]

* MightyWhitey: Jody fixes the Navajo family's motorcycle, finds a burial ground, [[spoiler: gets the old grandmother to talk for the first time in decades, and is able to perform a Navajo ritual that no Navajo has been able to in generations, saving the Navajo family from the ghosts summoned because of their ancestor's hatred for the white man.]]

* MistakenForJunkie: During the "Homeless" chapter, Stan assumes Jodie is a drug addict after she has a ghost-related freak-out. She has to assure him that she's not.
* MonsterAndTheMaiden: [[PlayerCharacter Jodie]] is bound to her GuardianEntity, Aiden, since birth. She's frequently frustrated with his overprotectiveness, but is ultimately [[AwLookTheyReallyDoLoveEachother happy that she has him]]. [[spoiler:Near the end of the game, it's revealed that Aiden is actually [[TwoSiblingsInOne the spirit of Jodie's stillborn twin brother]].]]
* MoodWhiplash: The chapter where Ryan rather heartlessly takes Jodie away to the CIA academy is immediately followed by a chapter where she's eagerly arranging a dinner date with him.

* NoodleIncident: We see all the really important parts of Jodie's life, [[FanficFuel but anything else is relegated to exposition.]] In particular, we don't know how ([[ShowDontTell or why]]) she became attracted to Ryan.
** The latter could have something to do with her three years of CIA training, which he helped oversee.
* NoOneGetsLeftBehind: It's up to the player to play this trope straight or avert it: [[spoiler:During the final push for the Black Sun, Cole gets hit by a hostile entity, and Jodie can either go back to drag him to safety or go on ahead without him. Going back results in an additional QTE and a healing minigame as Aiden; not going back results in Cole's death--but his wound prevents him from following Jodie, anyway. Notably, Ryan at first elects to leave Cole behind but if Jodie turns back, comes to her aid immediately.]]

* OptionalSexualEncounter: Jodie ''can'' have sex with Ryan during "The Dinner" chapter, but it's dependent on an earlier choice in a previous chapter. [[spoiler: Namely the "Like Other Girls" chapter. If Jodie never reaches the bar, or simply leaves before the bar flies attempt to rape her, then she'll be open to sex with Ryan. If not, she'll break down crying as they start getting intimate.]] It's also dependent on Aiden not interrupting them during their date.
* OurGhostsAreDifferent: Spectral beings such as Aiden are simply referred to as "entities" in-game. They are invisible and intangible, can possess people, and exert limited telekinesis. Oh, and in the psychic/spirit world the nasty ones appear as {{Living Shadow}}s with CombatTentacles, GlowingEyesOfDoom, {{Throat Light}}s, and MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily. We never really get to find out what benevolent entities such as Aiden look like when viewed by the naked eye because all of Aiden's cutscenes and gameplay take place through his eyes, There are drawings of Aiden by Jodie and other benevolent entities by the Navajos that show them to be a floating torso with glowing eyes, and it is implied they have no defining features and are made out of shadow-like energy.
* PapaWolf: Aiden, while not Jodie's father, will (try to) murderize anyone who so much as touches her the wrong way, whether she wants him to or not. He also gets audibly pissed at Jodie herself every time he has to save her from a suicide attempt.
* ParentalAbandonment: Jodie's [[spoiler:adoptive]] parents hand her over to the government for testing when she's only 8.
* ParentalSubstitute: Dawkins serves as this to Jodie. [[spoiler:Inverted as well, as Nathan uses Jodie as a substitute for his child after her death.]]
* PayEvilUntoEvil: Aiden is prone to this in regards to those to antagonize or try to harm Jodie. One particular example has him tormenting and potentually murdering a group of Jodie's would-be rapists by either strangling them one-by-one or possessing the bartender and making him perform a [[PsychicAssistedSuicide Psychic Assisted]] MurderSuicide.

* PleaseDontLeaveMe: Jodie begs her mother not to leave her at the government institute, to no avail.

* PosthumousNarration: [[spoiler:But only if the player chooses the Beyond ending.]]

** Aiden can telekinetically move objects and possess others, as well as other {{Poltergeist}} abilities. He also appears to be able to communicate directly with Jodie, possibly through {{Telepathy}}.

* RealityHasNoSubtitles: There are no subtitles during portions of the game where characters are speaking foreign languages, since Jodie doesn't know any of those languages, and the game is in her point of view.

* RoadBlock: The cops pursuing Jodie set up a roadblock on the other side of a bridge. She decides to just go straight through it on her stolen motorbike, having Aiden conjure a force field that stops all bullets and knocks friggin' SWAT trucks out of her way.

* SequelHook: No matter what ending you get, they all allude to [[spoiler:another conflict with the "Black Sun" and the "darker entities".]] Which is weird since David Cage notoriously dislikes sequels and, to anyone's knowledge, has no plans to make one for this game.

* SuperBreedingProgram: [[spoiler:It is revealed that the CIA has been experimenting with selective breeding by pairing up people with limited psychic abilities to see if their powers will be increased in the next generation. Jodie is a result of this project.]]

* TakeUpMySword: [[spoiler:If Jodie dies, Zoey takes up her place as the world's future savior, guided and protected by her spirit. Otherwise, in the Zoey/Homeless ending, Jodie and Zoey take on the apocalypse together, but Jodie consciously trains Zoey as the next savior, presumably out of fear that this trope will be needed.]]

* TheShrink: Nathan appears to be this, as well as a researcher of Jodie's abilities.

* ThisIsForEmphasisBitch: During the "The Condenser" mission, two of the dark entities, while possessing the scientists, call Jodie a "little bitch" before they attack her.

* ThreeMonthOldNewborn: Played with; Jodie helps a pregnant woman give birth in the "Homeless" chapter, and part of the mission involves snipping the umbilical cord. However, the baby is completely clean. Averted in a later scene, where pre-birth [[spoiler:Jodie]] is sufficiently... off in her proportions.

* TykeBomb: Deconstructed; Jodie is trained from a young age not only to use her psychic link, but also to be a CIA agent. However, she does ''not'' choose to do so, and the guilt of being forced to kill people hangs heavy on her, crippling her self-confidence and personal relationships.
* {{Tyrannicide}}: Subverted: [[spoiler:CIA sends Jodie on a mission to eliminate a tyrannical warlord in a war-torn African country. After she completes the mission, she learns that the man she killed was actually a democratically elected president who was seen as the last hope for his country to ever achieve peace and stability. She doesn't take the news well.]]

* UnrevealAngle: At the end of the game Jodie finally learns that Aiden is really [[spoiler:her stillborn twin brother]] and meets him face to face in the Infraworld. The way the camera is framed prevents the viewer from seeing his face.[[note]]However, hacks of the game show it to be almost identical to Jodie's bald-headed look. Which, him being her twin, should be unsurprising.[[/note]]

* DullSurprise: The sheriff that interrogates Jodie at the beginning of the game is later shown to be rather nonchalant about standing in the middle of his HQ with the CIA task force sent to detain Jodie slaughtered. Given the fact he's the sole survivor of an obviously incredibly brutal assault by a ghostly entity, he's probably suffering from a severe case of shock.
* EasterEgg: You can find a newspaper that mentions [[VideoGame/HeavyRain the Origami Killer]] in one of the levels.
** One of Jodie's stuffed animals is [[Anime/MyNeighborTotoro Totoro]].

* EldritchAbomination: The dark entities. All that's known about them is that they come from deep within the Infraworld, and that there's different types. The weakest variety resemble living shadows with CombatTentacles, but stronger ones like Yé'iitsoh, a malevolent spirit that creates sandstorms and looks like a monstrous, legless skeleton with a fanged mouth and glowing yellow eyes, have more unique appearances.
* EldritchLocation: The Black Sun's chamber is much, ''much'' larger when it is on than when it is off, and the Black Sun itself always seems to be the same distance away no matter where one is inside it.
* ElectromagneticGhosts: Entities cause significant interference with electrical devices, making lights flicker and screens display strange images. Aiden only causes it when he's angry or using his powers frequently.
* EvilIsNotAToy: The CIA repeatedly attempts to open rifts to the Infraworld in order to harness the power of the dark entities for military purposes. Each time, it backfires horribly and Jodie has to step in to stop it. Judging by [[spoiler: the visions Jodie (or Zoey, if Jodie chooses the Beyond ending) experience of another Black Sun experiment at the end of the game, they ''still'' haven't learned.]]
* ExactWords: To keep Jodie's life a secret, the CIA declared that she was "stillborn". [[spoiler:The "stillborn" part is half-correct; they were also talking about ''Aiden''.]]

* EyepatchOfPower: Ryan, if you refuse to talk when tortured.
* EyeScream: If you refuse to talk when captured by the Kazirstani military, the TortureTechnician cuts out Ryan's left eye and threatens to do the same to Jodie before being called off. Ryan later tells Jodie that it was the right choice, and that he would have done the same.
* FarEast: Republic of Kazirstan, clearly meant to represent either China or North Korea, while curiously at the same time being a ''[[{{Qurac}} -stan]]''. If the rift map is any indication, it is located somewhere near northern China and Mongolia. The soldiers there also seem to be speaking Mandarin Chinese.

** [[spoiler: Nathan's family appears in a photo early in the game on his desk, and the camera at one point puts the photo, Jodie, and the picture of Aiden next to each other, representing that Jodie and Aiden are Nathan's key to get his family back.]]
** There are times where Aiden can wander off during the levels, and it often hints or outright gives you tips for what to do or what is going to happen next. The two major examples are [[spoiler:during the mental hospital visit to see Norah, where Aiden can go into several rooms and be confronted by mental patients who can see him (as well as one who tells Jodie directly to be prepared to sacrifice her life to save the world), and the level immediately after, where Aiden can go through the giant metal doors to find the lab where Nathan is keeping his wife and daughter captive.]]
** [[spoiler: Shortly after Nathan first loses his family, Cole explains to a young Jodie that he "loved his wife and daughter more than anything in the world". This becomes literal in "The Black Sun", where he proves himself willing to deactivate the containment field around the Black Sun rift in the hope of being reunited with them.]]
*** [[spoiler:Another example is during the bar scene, where, using Aiden, you can eavesdrop on the two men conversing about raping Jodie ''long'' before the game moves to that point, and allow the player to escape the graphical scene.]]
* ForegoneVictory: With the idea of more-organic failure states, there is no way to get an actual game over. If Jodie fails or gets captured, all that happens is an alternate escape scenario takes place which puts you back on the plotted line. You '''will''' beat the game. It is, however, possible to fail the last QuickTimeEvent and receive a bad ending. You still ''technically'' beat the game, but the ending isn't really much better than simply dying at any point, simply consisting of [[spoiler:Jodie monologuing over a shadow background about how she failed and the world ended]].
* ForgotAboutHisPowers: There are numerous cases where Aiden would come in handy but his potential isn't even acknowledged. Despite being capable of messing around with objects without Jodie's involvement, he will never attempt to disarm people threatening Jodie with a weapon. His ability to strangle or possess people is arbitrarily limited whenever it would prove useful. Even having Aiden scout outside the Navajo ranch during the stand storm doesn't seem to occur to either of them, with Jodie instead opting to look outside herself and Aiden being inexplicably restricted from passing through walls.
** Possibly [[JustifiedTrope justified]] with the walls at the ranch because [[spoiler:if they were warded to keep spirits out, it would make sense that they'd keep Aiden in]].

* FreezeFrameBonus: In the "Homeless" chapter, while having Jodie walk around, there'll be a man reading a newspaper and if you look at the article he's reading, it's about the Origami Killer from ''VideoGame/HeavyRain''.
* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: A rather specific example. It only occurs when playing Duo mode in the chapter "The Dinner." If Aiden locks Jodie out of her apartment, she is able to force Aiden to let her back in. When this occurs, the Jodie player has control of Aiden.
* GeneralRipper: General [=McGrath=] wants to use the Condenser and Jodie to conquer the Infraworld, despite all of their prior attempts pointing to the fact that ''it wasn't going to work.'' True to form, [[spoiler:at the end of the game their constant attempts to break through are in danger of dooming the world.]]