For a good portion of the first part of the game, you can only sneak past BTs and pray to God that they don't catch you. But then you get your hands on your first anti-BT weapon in the form of Hematic Grenades and can finally fight back. That explosion of red, followed by the pained screaming as a BT slowly floats away before disintegrating never gets old.
After you beat the Catcher that Higgs summons to Port Knot City, Heartman, over the radio, can barely contain his awe since no one has ever been able to kill a Catcher. And a glorified mailman with almost no combat experience just did exactly that. Granted, any first triumph against a Catcher grants this dialogue, but Sam beating the Catcher here also spares Port Knot from being obliterated by the Homo Demens.
With how annoying the MULEs can be haranguing you for your cargo, there is nothing more satisfying than beating one up and then smashing the rest across the face with one of their own packages. Even if Sam hits them so hard that it destroys the cargo inside, it's usually worth it.
BB Flipping the Bird at Deadman when the latter is going on about how Sam should have incinerated BB. Also shows that BB and Sam are perfect for each other.
Fragile's backstory. Although tragic, it shows that despite her bad rep, she’s more of a hero than anyone would have guessed. After she delivered the nuclear bomb that destroyed Middle Knot City for Higgs, she was labeled a terrorist in league with Homo Demens by the rest of the world. Higgs later attempted to use her for another such attack on South Knot City. Managing to catch on to Higgs' plan before the bomb makes it into the city, she instead attempts to take the bomb to Crater Lake, a massive lake filled entirely with tar that would contain the explosion. Higgs, however, catches her before she can make it and presents her with a Sadistic Choice: flee and let the bomb destroy the city, or run through timefall in only her underwear to take the bomb to the lake, with only a mask to cover her face, leaving the rest of her body exposed to the rain's rapid aging effects. Refusing to repeat her mistakes at Middle Knot, she chooses the latter, telling him "I'm Fragile, but not that fragile" before taking off running to the Crater Lake, saving the countless lives in South Knot City. Considering that timefall ages everything it touches, her selfless decision has likely left her with a significantly shortened lifespan, and while she does later tell Sam that she regrets it, she didn’t hesitate for a second to do the right thing.
Fragile gets a chance to give her own chilling Sadistic Choice to a powerless Higgs: commit suicide and go to the Seam, or stay on Amelie's beach. Forever.
Unnerving as it is, the introduction to your first battle with Cliff most definitely counts. Up until this point in the story, you've only ever seen Cliff in flashback scenes as a goofball father doing his best to keep his child happy and entertained despite his visible sadness over his wife's condition - despite being played by and looking exactly like Mads Mikkelsen, nothing indicates that he's anything approaching a badass or dangerous character. Then, for the first time, you see him on the World War I Beach, where he rises up out of the tar with a personal squadron of undead soldiers in full combat gear, smokes a cigarette, and smiles as chiralium leaks out of his eye. In one minute with zero dialogue, you known damn well that this man is a force to be reckoned with, and it's a credit to both Mads and Kojima that the transition between the two personas is so effective.
Chiral zip-lines. These aren't normal video game zip-lines, but gravity-defying energy beams that launch you hundreds of meters through the air. A small network of them can make the most annoying mountain treks a cakewalk. And BB enjoys the ride, too!
Crossing the Tar Belt. An endless flat sea of black, ugly tar cuts off the natural landscape you've been exploring up until now, and the only sign that anything exists at all past this point is some derelict city ruins to the side. You have a mission to complete... on the other side of the Tar Belt. And you sure can't swim, and trying to just walk through it sinks you to your death. The solution? Piss off the Beached Things of the area, which are far, FAR larger than anything else you'll have encountered up until now, manifesting as monstrous black whales. How is this helpful? Because during significant manifestations like this, time becomes strange and disjointed, and the buildings, roads and cars which USED TO be in this area bubble up out of the tar. You then spend a good five or so minutes enduring a pulse-pounding pursuit as you clamber, scamper and otherwise panickedly sprint your way OVER the Tar Belt, atop the ruins of the once-modern world, with one of the best music tracks in the soundtrack sharing its percussion and synths with you, as the vile monster whales constantly stalk and try to lunge at you. In a normal engagement with a BT "Catcher" monster, they can become agitated at the player's use of a building ruin as a place to stand and take cover, and it is able to bring the building down. Indeed, the whales make their best attempts to catch Sam this way too... but in this particular case, you are constantly on the move, from rooftop to rooftop, over cars and trucks and buses bobbing out of the tar. This solution impresses the folks back home, too, making it both an incredible and exhilirating chase scene and a gratifying demonstration of Sam's ingenuity and bravery in the face of a seemingly insurmountable obstacle that would've stopped literally anyone else on the planet dead in their tracks.
At one point, Higgs shoots at Sam with an assault rifle in a cutscene. However, the bullets get blocked...by the odradek sensor! And there’s a shot of BB in its pod scowling at Higgs with its fists upraised as if squaring off. Your connection with BB is so strong that the baby is trying to protect you. Aww... Now that's familial love.
After all of the taunting Higgs throws at you throughout the game while hiding behind his teleportation and summoned BTs, it's immensely satisfying to finally face him in head-on combat and give him the personal beatdown he deserves.
It turns out Higgs is secretly the "pizza guy," Peter Englert. Who kept giving you annoyingly impossible pizza runs. You already beat the shit out of him by the time you find this out, but it's good to know you got revenge on that guy too. And hey, delivering one last pizza post-mortem unlocks golden chiralium bullets that blow right through BTs! Pretty awesome reward for all that hard work.
One cannot help but admire the sheer Manipulative Bastard nature of Bridget/Amelie. They manage to get the Last Stranding started by convincing Sam to go through with it.
