Fridge Brilliance
- At one point in the game, Senua has to face Garmr, the wolf that watches over the gate to Helheim. Only the monster Senua ultimately ends up fighting is not a wolf, but instead takes the shape of a huge, skeletal wild boar. What at first looks like a case of Artistic License actually makes perfect sense when you realise that Senua as a Caledonian Celt is not familiar with Norse mythology aside from the vaguely summarised legends that Druth told her, and so all she sees is filtered through her own cultural background. Garmr wasn't specified to her as anything but a "beast", and so she imagines it as the epitome of terror and savagery known to a Celt, which so happens to be the wild boar.
- Surtr and Valravn also stand out in a similar way. In Norse mythology, Surtr is a fire giant from Muspelheim with no connection to Helheim, so he has no business being there, and a Valravn is a Danish shapeshifting monster rather than a Norse god. Their presence makes more sense when one factors in that Senua may be fighting manifestations of her own fears based on the stories Druth told her rather than the genuine articles.
- The same really goes for any of the enemies she encounters in the game. They all resemble actors in costumes and masks, posing as grotesquely exaggerated caricatures of Norsemen, like bugbears meant to scare children and fuel xenophobia. Surtr, the God of fire, is basically a burning wicker man with a torso moulded from flesh or clay.
- See those shapes floating around when Senua is focusing in combat? Those aren't Norse runes, those are letters from the Celtic Ogham alphabet. When Senua focuses on the fight, she's reminding herself of who she really is, refusing to be consumed by the hell that the Northmen brought her into.
- When Druth tells the story of Hela he mentions that the rest of the gods were afraid of her because her mother was a Giantess while her father was Loki. The solution they took was to make the underworld her domain. Senua's backstory reveals that she inherited her condition from her mother, and that caused the people of the village to fear her as a "cursed" individual. As a result, Zynbel locked Senua in a basement for years. Senua being able to identify with Hela in this manner can explain (in part, if not entirely) why they turn into each other when Senua's final vision ends.
Fridge Horror
- Senua carries Dillion's head with her to Hel, but when we see his body in a flashback sequence, his head is attached. She must have had to cut it off herself.
- The ending seems to imply that Senua hallucinated at least part of the game's locations. In retrospect, that makes all the corpses in the burnt-out villages that she comes across in Surtr's segment more of a representation of her memory of her own village following the Northmen raid.
- The way Senua half-turns away from Hela the first time she sees her, as if doubting what she is seeing - but that's exactly what she's doing, Foreshadowing the fact that Hela's half burnt appearance is a twisted memory of her mother being burned at the stake.
