Nightmare Fuel / Baldur's Gate III

Becoming a mindflayer is not a pleasant process.

Keeping the proud Baldur's Gate tradition of making players piss their pants.

WARNING: Spoiler tags are off per Moments subpage policy.

Main Game

General

• You may have heard of Ceremorphosis, the process by which Mind Flayers are created: They implant one of their parasitic larvae into a host's eye or ear and let it eat the victim's brain and change them into another Mind Flayer over about seven to ten days. That's disgusting and creepy enough on its own. The teaser trailer decides to give us a lovely view of its full, hideous glory, including the poor guy's skeleton deforming while he watches, his hair falling out as his scalp bubbles open and tentacles spilling out of his mouth, all rendered in photorealistic animation. Transformation Horror at its finest.
• The end of the teaser trailer has to be the biggest Oh, Crap! moment in D&D history: You are kidnapped by Mind Flayers, who are then attacked by Githyanki and taken on a trip across the Planes. You get free as the ship burns all around you and climb over to the hole in the hull... And see the Blood War raging across Avernus in front of you. "This Is Gonna Suck" doesn't even begin to cover it.
• The story frequently mentions that the Mind Flayer tadpoles in your heads are special, as they haven't forced their hosts through ceremorphosis. Shadowheart even mentions that a Mind Flayer called her a "weapon". So now the question is: if it's not supposed to transform its host, what is it truly meant for?
• In the 4th patch version of the beta, druids gain access to the ability to speak to various animal NPCs in the game. Some of these conversations are funny, others are interesting or even cute... And then there are some which are just plain creepy.
  • One such encounter is a pair of Yeenoghu-worshipping hyenas who have been trying to feed on humanoid flesh to trigger their transformation into/birth of gnolls. The one who hasn't eaten enough demands flesh so that it can change. The one who has eaten enough completes its gnollification before the player's eyes... Which involves the new gnoll growing inside its belly and then clawing its way out as a fully-formed adult. And the narrator notes that the dying hyena is filled with equal parts agony and religious bliss at this experience.
  • A giant spider, whose "voice" is translated as a disturbingly seductive Scottish woman's, pleads with the druid to come closer and let the spider eat them, describing them as "my sweet" and "my desire".
  • You can find a sheep that's actually a redcap, an evil fey resembling a cross between a dwarf and a goblin, in disguise. If you penetrate its disguise, it threatens you, rambling on about how much it wants to maim and mutilate you.
  • A traumatized frog that can only repeat the mantra "green leaves, shallow water", in a voice that warbles with audible pain and shattered sanity. It manages to gasp out just two other words which imply just why this frog is so freaked out: "Careful...Ethel!"
• Malus Thorm is disturbing in a way that arguably eclipses even Ketheric himself. When you first encounter him, he's torturing an eyeless man strapped to an operating gurney, calmly lecturing four undead nurses on the intricacies of pain. If you're clever enough, you can convince him that the best way to teach his 'students' is to personally go under the knife. He then brutally murders his victim, takes the man's place on the table, and urges the nurses to soothe him. All four begin stabbing him violently as your character looks on in shock and horror, all while Surgery of a Hope plays in the background. Watch the scene for yourself if you like.
• Ketheric Thorm reveals his inability to die when one of the goblins tries to kill him. She throws a halberd into his chest, seemingly killing him... only for him to slowly grab the halberd and yank it out of his chest. Approaching the goblin, he merely drops the halberd at her feet. "Try again." Desperate, the goblin picks it up and swings at his neck, nearly decapitating him... and Ketheric just slowly grabs it, pulls it away, reattaches his head with the same ease of moving his head from side to side, and drops the halberd again. As the goblin can only beg for her life, Ketheric slams his fists down on the goblin's head, killing her. See it here.
• Upon encountering Ketheric Thorm at the mind flayer colony, regardless if you decided to kill him or talk him down, he will end up throwing himself into a pit as a sacrifice to summon an avatar of Myrkul. The party is then treated to a chilling monologue from the god of death himself before facing him in battle.
  Myrkul: I am the smile of the worm-cleansed skull. I am the regrets of those who remain, and the restlessness of those who are gone. I am the haunt of mausoleums, the god of graves and age, of dusk and dust. I am Myrkul, Lord of Bones, and you have slain my Chosen. But it is no matter. For I am Death. And I am not the end — I am a beginning.
• Auntie Ethel is the thing of Grimm fairy tale nightmares. She initially appears to the party as a doting old lady that wants to help and lives out in a happy grove in an idyllic cottage, but then when you expose her for what she really is you see that she's a disgusting monster. She makes deals with her victims, but it always ends badly for them through the use of Exact Words as a Jerkass Genie would. In the basement of her cottage you find numerous remains of her victims which range from people petrified or turned into an illusionary wall that has had to watch numerous intended heroes get cut down as they tried to defeat her. Her minions wear mind controlling masks and are aware of their actions but can barely fight back against it, if at all. If you decide to try and save them by knocking them out, removing the mask will kill them anyway. Finally there's her general plans for her latest victims, which involve kidnapping children to eat them so that she can then rebirth them into hags like herself. You encounter one such child in Act III that has been Eaten Alive by Ethel and is currently in her stomach. If you don't take the necessary steps before killing her, the child will also die in the battle. Even if you save her the poor kid is traumatised to the point of not being able to speak and is too afraid to leave her home.
• In the pursuit of getting access to the Temple of Bhaal, the player learns that Sarevok is still alive even a hundred years after his second resurrection, and despite his comment about how he tried to redeem himself thanks to his sibling's example he ultimately threw his lot back in with Bhaal because he just couldn't resist the call to violence that's In the Blood for all Bhaalspawn. We can learn from him that Orin the Red is actually his granddaughter and that her being Bhaal's chosen for the time being is the only reason why Sarevok has not made a move once more, as he's content simply playing party to any potential candidates to become assassins for Bhaal for now... But after the resolution of all the drama with the Absolute, regardless of player choice, who's to say that Sarevok won't just pick up where he left off a hundred years ago with his granddaughter dead and Bhaal potentially desperate to get the bloodshed he wants.
  • The one thing that's worse than all of that is the revelation that Orin is Sarevok's granddaughter... and his daughter. It's possible to confront him about this, and Sarevok admits that he viewed Orin as little more than a future sacrifice to Bhaal. The fact that Sarevok ordered Helena to murder Orin as an offering to Bhaal, only for Helena to die at Orin's hand first, only makes it bite deeper. Orin is absolutely BROKEN if she learns amour this, having a mental breakdown when she’s meant to be fighting you. Bhaal himself then forces her into the Slayer form so she can fight you.
• With the game containing Multiple Endings depending on the player's choices, some of them can be quite the downer to witness. Even more so if you went for an evil playthrough.
  • The Deal with The Devil ending. If you chose to accept Raphael's deal to trade the Orphic hammer for the Crown of Karsus and go through with it, you'll receive a short cutscene at the end of the game. In it, he boasts about the efficiency of his conquest of the Nine Hells and how afterwards he'll be finding new worlds for him to conquer with an nigh-infinite army of devils now under his command. All while looking directly at and addressing the player.
    Raphael: My legions are beginning their assault of Zariel's flying fortress just about now — It will fall before the sun rises over Toril, and Avernus will be mine. Conquering the other Hells will be simplicity itself — Some of the archdevils are already making overtures of peace and promises of tribute. My dear father Mephistopheles is among them. Even he sees how the tide has turned. And with all Nine Hells under my command, I will end the Blood War — Inferna Victoria — and look for new worlds to conquer. It won't be long before I come knocking at your door. Ta-ta for now.
  • Should you allow Gale to detonate the orb at the end of Act 2, you'll successfully kill Ketheric, Orin, Gortash, and the elder brain (as well as your current party), without having to bother with the third act... But, as the narrator notes, this leaves all those infected with illithid tadpoles free to transform, and the Sword Coast will be overrun by an illithid army.
  • You can persuade the Emperor to take control of the Netherbrain and use it to rule the Sword Coast alongside you. Once you succeed in convincing him, however, it becomes clear that handing that much power over to a mind flayer while having no control over the situation yourself was a poor decision, as he immediately uses the Netherbrain's power to turn you and your entire party into his own personal thralls, unable to do anything but cheer as the Emperor takes your suggestion to Take Over the World. Your character ultimately meets the same fate as Duke Stelmane, his ‘ally’ before you.
    The Emperor: In my name.
  • Basically any ending as the Dark Urge where you accept Bhaal. Either you take over the Netherbrain in his name in order to slaughter the whole world, or if you act against Bhaal’s will, he punishes you by turning you into nothing more than a mind-addled beast who either brutally kills themselves to deny Bhaal the pleasure of enthralling them, ends up imprisoned for life and forgotten, or goes to the epilogue to murder their companions.
• The Strange Ox in Emerald Grove is a funny little diversion. If you talk to him with cast Speak with Animals, it's clear he's more than an ordinary ox. He's quite intent to reach Baldur's Gate, and entirely confident in his ability to do so, with or without the tieflings he nominally serves. And it's clear he has secrets, though even with successful rolls, he'll only hint at those secrets. Then you meet him again the Last Light Inn, though he is much more agitated. You can once again ask him what he really is. Succeed on the roll, and he'll bid you come closer, so that he can psychically share the answer... Cue Jump Cut to screams and images of piles of corpses. Then, in an irritated tone: "Are you satisfied?" Pester him even more and he'll finally reveal his true form: A shapeshifting blob that's not all that difficult to defeat, but considering the effort it took to unmask him, coupled with the abovementioned vision and the havoc a malevolent shapeshifter can cause in a major city, it really makes you wonder what exactly he was planning to do in Baldur's Gate.
• The revelation of what the Cult of the Absolute's plan actually is: It's really just a False Flag Operation of the most warped magnitude orchestrated by the Dead Three and their Chosen to weaponize the Illithids and the Ceremorphosis process by subjugating an Elder Brain's will to create an entire army of Slave Mooks that also serve as walking Tyke Bombs on command, as the magical enhancing they have done to the tadpoles in their followers brains make transforming into a Mind Flayer instantaneous (and render most of them who transform Deader than Dead in the process as those who do not have sufficient willpower — like the Emperor — to keep their identity during the process are essentially obliterated even on a spiritual level as the new Mind Flayer's soul takes their place as multiple Gods in the story point out), which can cause enough havoc and destruction that the entire Sword Coast would buckle under the weight of the Dead Three in a matter of hours, rather than days... And all for the express purpose of fulfilling each of the three Gods' cruel agendas by causing as much misery, death, and fear as possible.
• Orin the Red is made of Nightmare Fuel. She's an Axe-Crazy Bhaalspawn who takes pleasure in mayhem and murder for its own sake, and she leads the cult of Bhaal, who hang out underneath the city discussing torture and murder techniques as casually as one might discuss recipes when they're not out actually committing those murders. The party can come across a number of truly grisly murder scenes carried out by the cult - Orin views her murders as art, arranging her victims’ body parts long after their death in a twisted and gruesome display. There’s even a sidequest involving collecting the body parts of a dismembered victim. Even worse, she's a Voluntary Shapeshifter, which means she can perfectly disguise herself as anyone and show up anywhere without warning. The game plays up that latter aspect by having multiple NPCs transform into her as you interact with them, and later Gortash can inform you that your camp has been infiltrated. Sure enough...
  • It's particularly gruesome if you confront her in the Temple of Bhaal and fail a check to convince her not to kill your kidnapped companion, as she casually leans over your already-blood-splattered friend and jams her knives straight into their eyes, all while the camera gives you a nice, close look.
  • It’s worse if you play the Dark Urge, since she’s the reason for your amnesia. How was this amnesia induced? Orin split open your skull in a fit of mad rage and jealousy, before inserting a mind flayer tadpole into the hole that would eat your brain. Yuck.
• Ketheric Thorm is such a menace throughout Act 2 that his shadow literally hangs over the land. The Shadow Curse he's unleashed will literally sap the life out of you unless you take the necessary precautions. The areas where you have to roam with a lit torch at all times are the relatively safe areas, with large portions of the map completely inaccessible unless you take some very specific steps to acquire a working Moonlantern or the Pixie's Blessing. The Last Light Inn stands out as the only safe refuge in the entire map, and even their occupants are paranoid enough to immediately try and arrest you upon your arrival until a Character Witness (either Mol or Marcus) bails you out.
  • Even the Last Light Inn isn’t really a refuge. Ketheric knew about it all along, sending Marcus there to eventually take Isobel back, forcing you to enter a difficult fight against Marcus and a load of undead, the moment you seek protection against the Shadow Curse. And if you’re the Dark Urge, Bhaal directly tries to force you to Isobel and thus everyone in the inn or face terrible consequences.
  • If Isobel dies or is taken, you are treated to a lovely cutscene of the Moonshield breaking and all of the Harpers painfully turning into Shadow cursed undead, as you’re forced to fight your way through a horde of zombies. But the worst part is after the fight. When there’s nothing but silence, and a darker version of the Last Light theme. No NP Cs to talk to, no light, nothing but a shadow cursed waste.
• The environment inside Moonrise Towers constantly radiates an aura of terror, even if you can easily infiltrate it as a friendly, with Ketheric showing his nigh-invulnerability in his introductory cutscene in a rather graphic manner. The most horrific part, however, is the illithid colony under Moonrise, which is chock-full of Gorn and displays of horrific experimentation on humans and all sentient races. Standout examples include Chop, a Bugbear worker clearly suffering a Fate Worse than Death with the way his mind has been hollowed out (who begs you to kill him if you suggest it), and the Dark Urge's conversation with Kressa Bonedaughter, where she lovingly recounts all the ways she eagerly violated them, and promptly attacks them so she can capture them again.
• Perhaps the most horrifying thing about Ketheric is that he was, by all accounts, once a good and decent man. A benevolent ruler who deeply cared for his family and his people. Slowly transformed by grief into a power hungry monster, unable to accept that death is a natural part of life. When you remove the fantasy elements, the idea of a good man being driven into a mad tyrant by grief and an inability to control his surroundings is scarily plausible.
  • The Gauntlet of Shar, the temple created by Ketheric Thorm to guard the Nightsong, the source of his invulnerability. Being a huge temple dedicated to raising an army of Shar worshipping lunatics is already pretty bad, but the place is absolutely littered with corpses and skulls.
    • The reason the place is littered in dead? Raphael hired an orthon, Yurgir, to hunt down all the Dark Justiciars as part of a deal he made. However, he also split one last Dark Justiciar into a swarm of rats so Yurgir would forever be trapped in Shar’s halls, hunting down anyone who entered.
  • Then there’s the revelation of what the so-called Nightsong you’ve been hearing about all game is. It’s not just some magical artifact but an immortal woman imprisoned and sapped of magical energy so Ketheric can stay immortal. Kept chained for over a century, unable to move, sit, sleep, talk to anyone, to even die. All so Ketheric can keep ruling over his cursed wasteland. For bonus points, one journal you find in the Shadow-Cursed Lands implies that Shadowheart is not the first aspiring Dark Justiciar to be given the command to kill her; a lot of Dark Justiciars of old used her as the obligatory sacrifical Selunite, forcing her to endure lethal wounds of her own on top of Ketheric's wounds. It's possible the only reason that Shadowheart was able to kill her for good is because Shar simply wanted to punish Ketheric, who spurned Shar in the century between the previous candidate and Shadowheart's arrival.
  • While we’re talking about the Nightsong, why not talk about the person who made her Soul Cage in the first place, Balthazar? An absolutely deranged lunatic who loves brutally experimenting on living and dead alike. Upon entering his chambers you body parts strewn about, torture instruments, and his deranged experiments to create ‘Moonlanterns’, trapping pixies in a torture device that burns them alive so they can dispel shadows around them. You find his undead experiments strewn about anywhere the Absolute holds sway, even later on when you find out that he supplies corpses for the Steel Watch. He talks about his centuries-long imprisonment of Nightsong with unfettered pride, with it even being implied that he personally enjoyed torturing her during her imprisonment. It’s also likely Balthazar who likely converted Ketheric to Myrkul, after serving as his advisor and thus being able to slowly corrupt him.
• Enver Gortash is the most outwardly affable of the Chosen, and by the time you confront him, he's come to respect your abilities and offers you an alliance so that you can work with him to subdue the Elder Brain and rule Baldur's Gate together. His pragmatism, the sincerity of the offer, and a lack of overt Kick the Dog moments can make even a heroic avatar justify accepting his offer, but Gortash couldn't have become a ringleader of the Cult without having his own horrific skeletons in his closet. In fact, he's the closest thing the Cult has to a mastermind, as he was the one who spearheaded the research on how mindflayers could be leveraged to cultivate a brainwashed and devoted following of pawns. Furthermore, the ever-present Steel Watch serve as his own personal attack dogs, intimidating the people of the city in the name of "security". The implications on how he researched and implemented his ideas are exactly as horrific as they sound, and you can explore just how cold, calculating, and downright inhumane his methods are, as he terrorizes and enslaves the Gondians to work for him, conducts terrifying human experiments to determine how to properly create "True Souls" and Steel Watch units, and has a massive Underwater Base where he keeps valuable prisoners as leverage, just in case his slaves, subordinates, or even potential allies like you, get any ideas. There's also a fair bit of Realism-Induced Horror with him too, as there are plenty of historical and Real Life examples of tyrants who have leveraged institutional power and good publicity to carry out their atrocities with minimal accountability.
  • Gortash out of all the villains is by far the most close to real life. It’s unlikely you know a deranged serial killer like Orin or a power hungry general like Thorm. But Gortash? The charming narcissist with a quick smile who sweet talks and plots his way to the top, disposing of people as he sees fit? You can find people like that everywhere. And what’s more, it works in game! After meeting Gortash, most people will work with him, at least going for Orin first, even after knowing what he did to Karlach. Most people will most likely stumble across the Iron Throne by sheer accident, hunting someone who killed a mermaid, and only to go in the water to see what’s going on, then realise the true extent of what an evil bastard Gortash is.
  • Nearby the Blushing Mermaid, you can find a couple of Baldurian kids who are playing at being Steel Watchers scanning for Absolute spies. While the kids' acting is pretty funny, it also shows that Gortash already has the next generation of Baldurians in his grip. Some of the grownups still think the Steel Watch is creepy and want it gone, but to the kids, the burgeoning police state is so normal it's part of their games now, not even something to question.
• Then there’s the Emperor himself. He may seem like a Token Heroic Orc at first glance, but beneath the surface lies one of the most subtly manipulative and sinister characters in the game. He speaks in half truths constantly, but if you read a lot of the notes in the game, the truth about him becomes clear as day. To boot:
  • The game makes you choose the form of the Dream Guardian he first appears to you as. He is reaching into your mind to appear attractive so you will be more receptive to him and susceptible to his manipulations.
  • The game implies that the Emperor is monitoring everything you are doing. When Raphael blocks out the Emperor to make his deal, it’s stated that your mind is clear for the first time since the nautiloid because the Emperor isn’t your head, and the Emperor is extremely freaked out that he cannot hear your thoughts and tries to pry your encounter with Raphael from your mind. Every moment of your character’s life from when they were on that nautiloid, the Emperor was watching and prying into your mind, with absolutely no regard for your privacy. Imagine being in that position as your character. Having a mind flayer watch your every move, watch everything you’re doing during the day, read all of your thoughts, be in your head for everything you do, be that mundane tasks like getting dressed or during moments that should be intimate.
  • The reason you’re not a Mind Flayer, and are protected by the Prism? He’s leveraging a githyanki’s psychic power by enthralling him to serve his will. Orpheus is aware of this, and everything you are doing, the whole time.
    • Worse? He will be outright furious if you make any efforts to try to free Orpheus. He sees nothing wrong with subjugating him in this way, sees his submissive slumber as ‘beautiful’, and at the end even tries to eat his brain to steal his power. It’s implied that the reason he’s so insistent on keeping him subjugated instead of working with him is either so he’ll have leverage over you… or so he can take Orpheus’ power to resist Elder Brains for himself at some point. When you free Orpheus, the Emperor simply goes back to being a slave to the Netherbrain, without any hesitation, because he knows any control he has over you is over.
  • If you reject his advances in a blunt way, he will reveal to you the truth about Duke Stelmane. She was enthralled by the Emperor and forced into being his companion, with him controlling her every movement. People around her began to notice that something was off, including Wyll, Stelmane’s doctor and Gortash, who has a note about Stelmane’s mental state hidden in his safe (this is how he discovered the Emperor’s true nature). He then drops the manipulative act since he knows you won’t fall for it anymore. He outright calls you his puppet, tells you that you can't get rid of him no matter how much you want to because you have ‘no other choice’, and worse, tells you to reconsider ‘unlocking your potential’ (become more Illithid) because if you do not, he will force you to do so. It says a lot that your character looks just as furious in this moment as they do when they kill Orin as the Dark Urge.
    • The fact that he speaks about the person he enthralled with such fondness, as if she were an ex-lover, before you learn the truth. It’s incredibly sinister and twisted that he keeps up a painting of his victim in his home, and speaking about her with such reverence, when in reality he was controlling her every movement, keeping her around like you would a captive pet.
    • He also refers to his relationship with Duke Stelmane as ''intimate'' in a previous conversation. It’s up to interpretation in what way, but at the very least he subjected her to years of psychic enslavement, mental degradation and torture. At the very worst… well.
  • The notes you find after defeating Gortash? They’re all about the Emperor. The one that stands out the most? Gortash sending out ‘a tadpoled strike team in a regrown nautiloid, piloted by the Emperor, to retrieve the Astral Prism. Most likely, the nautiloid in the opening. The implication is obvious, and horrifying - the Mind Flayer who kidnapped and infected you WAS the Emperor. Likely so he would have leverage over the player character and their party.
    • It gives even worse when you consider that he was gradually trying to coax you into becoming a mind flayer from the very start. In the first Dream visit, he tells you to embrace the power the tadpole gives you, but in the form of someone you’d find attractive so you’re more receptive to it. He constantly points out Mind Flayer tadpoles as you travel so you’ll become more and more Illithid, and if you refuse he’ll just say you’re not ready yet, disregarding your agency since it implies that eventually you will come around. Then he reveals his true nature as an Illithid, he wastes no time in giving you a tadpole he’s been preparing to turn you half-Illithid, and if you don’t crush it on the spot he’ll constantly press you to embrace it. Then in the end, when you ask about becoming a Mind Flayer to wield the stones, he’ll reveal he’s been preparing a tadpole the entire time for your use, to become a mind flayer with. He doesn’t seem to care that becoming a mind flayer means gradually losing more and more of yourself. When you consider that mind flayers like to manipulate thralls through transformation though…
    • When you think about it, the characters the Emperor took and infected all make perfect sense and show how ahead he was of you the whole time. Shadowheart provides a perfect cover story for the Prism being taken. Astarion would appreciate being infected since it gives him freedom. Gale contains the same magic as the crown. Lae’Zel gives the Emperor the means to keep his enemies, the Gith, closeby and monitored. Wyll and Karlach both have good reason to hate Gortash. And if you’re the Dark Urge, well - you’re probably the centrepiece of his plot. The one who started this whole thing to begin with, who now has personal reasons to turn against the cult. Yeah, he knew exactly who you were the entire time.
  • Then there’s the matter of Ansur. He glosses over this initially, but Ansur is how he became free of the Elder Brain’s influence to begin with. The Emperor was initially none of other than Balduran, the legendary founder of Baldur’s Gate. Ansur tried for years to find a cure for his lover’s Illithid nature, only to eventually realise nothing could be done. So the Emperor killed him, having taken a liking to being a mind flayer. Not realising that he was becoming a soulless illithid. And best of all, you only learn all of this after the Emperor’s constant withholding of information leads to you unwittingly walking straight into a fight against a furious undead dragon.
    • The worst thing about the Ansur debacle is that when Ansur says ‘you were becoming Illithid’ with such venom, he wasn’t referring to the Emperor’s physical form, but rather, the fact he was becoming the manipulative husk of his former self we’ve come to know throughout the game. By the time we meet Ansur, we’ve learned about Stelmane’s mental degradation and how the Emperor psychically tortured her for years so he could run Baldur’s Gate from the shadows. We’ve been constantly misled and manipulated by him, had to beg him to save Minsc, had to deal with him probing into our thoughts, saw how he enslaved Orpheus, had to deal with him constantly trying to push us to become more Illithid ourselves with no regard for what we want to do with our own body. Most likely, Ansur had to deal with the Emperor’s manipulation and abuse in the same way we have throughout the game, and like us, couldn’t take it anymore. Except in his case, he knew the man he was before being a mind flayer. He even sees it as we might at this point, calling us the Emperor’s thrall.
    • The Emperor says Ansur tried to kill him in his sleep as a Mercy Kill. However, is this really true? Are we not getting the full picture? When we see Ansur’s corpse, he’s in his full dragon form, in the Wrymway lair, with Balduran’s legendary giant slayer sword able to be looted from Ansur’s corpse. One has to wonder whether Ansur was really the aggressor here…
    • Even if it was Ansur who came to the Emperor in his sleep, we have a interaction where Lae’Zel tries to Mercy Kill us in a similar way, upon feeling the signs of ceremorphosis, at the beginning of the game, before we first meet the Dream Guardian. We are able to quite easily talk down a Githyanki who doesn’t know us that well without having to fight her. Yet Balduran somehow wasn’t able to talk down Ansur, the implied love of his life? Something doesn’t add up.
    • The fact that Balduran, the legendary hero who founded Baldur’s Gate, has been reduced into a Mind Flayer. For centuries, the people of Baldur’s Gate must have wondered what became of Balduran as his name passed into legend, not realising that he was kidnapped and reduced into an Illithid. Worse? He’s proud of it. If you tell Duke Ravenguard what happened to Balduran, he constantly barges into your mind, telling you how brilliant being a Mind Flayer is and how he’s risen. He doesn’t seem to care that biologically, mind flayers have to eat the brains of sapient creatures.
    Ansur: You had every choice. You were becoming Illithid. I offered you merciful death. You chose to fight. And you bring your thrall before me. How far has the Great Balduran fallen?
  • If you needed any more evidence that the Emperor is manipulating you like any other mind flayer would, take the book in his lair as evidence - the only way to beat a Mind Flayer, if you can’t stay away from one, is to judge them by their actions, not their words, and to keep strong allies so you can’t fall for their manipulations. Suddenly, Lae’Zel’s insistence on not trusting the Dream Guardian at the start makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
• After collecting all the netherstones the Absolute starts to break free from its confinement. Up until this point you only felt the quakes coming from the elder brain and they were temporary, but now when you walk through the city random people will start turning into Mind Flayers and start attacking everything in sight. The random attacks are alarming enough, but so is the knowledge that you've spent hours in the city by now and you walked by dozens of infected citizens without even realizing it. Now imagine you're a resident of the city and you just had to witness your neighbor, friend or family member suddenly transform out of nowhere.
• Then there’s the fact that the Absolute was planning every event in the game from the beginning. She was the one who freed the Emperor from her control, and let the Chosen know about the Astral Prism. Which then led to you eventually bringing the Netherstones to her. You were playing into her hands all along without even realising it. Even the Emperor is shocked.
• The Underdark Beach has the skeletal remains of a marine predator that's easily twice the size of the boat, along with a bark from whichever character is closest to the water referencing "what creatures might lurk in the dark waters". We're never intercepted by one, thankfully, but that's a hot button for anyone antsy about deep ocean water.

Custom Origin/"Tav"

• Given how heavily the game leans into the traumatic origins and tragic backstories of its more amoral and villainous characters, including the Chosen of the Absolute and the Dark Urge, a villainous Tav stands out as a subversion of the Freudian Excuse trope. Unlike with the Dark Urge, or amoral Origin characters such as Astarion or La'ezel, there is nothing in your backstory that compels you to act in an immoral fashion. You, as the player, have full control over every facet of a custom Origin's characterization, thus firmly establishing that people don't always have or even need a clear-cut reason to do bad things other than just choosing to.

The Dark Urge

• The Dark Urge's situation. They have no memories, and they feel compelled to kill anything that breathes, i.e. everyone around them. While indulging in these murderous urges makes the avatar a monster by default, trying to resist the urge is even worse as they suffer some sort of blackout episode and wake up surrounded by dead bodies. Not even your companion characters are exempt from this, especially not your lover. Unless you pass a Wisdom check, the Dark Urge kills them in their sleep. Then it turns out there's a damn good reason for their horrifying condition, they are in fact a Bhaalspawn.
• Alfira. Dear God Alfira. One night, Alfira will come to your camp from the Grove and ask to join, inspired by you saving the Grove. The next morning, you wake up to blood all over your hands and Alfira’s dead body: she has been disembowelled, had her eyes removed, had her horn snapped off and shoved through her heart, and stabbed multiple times past her death until the Dark Urge’s arm ached.
• The memories the Dark Urge can restore by eating a Noblestalk paint a horrifying picture of just what they were like before. Imagine being an amnesiac, and finding out that before you lost your memories you killed babies and dissected living victims.
• The Sadistic Choice that the Dark Urge faces in Act 2: either they have to kill Isobel and thus everyone in Last Light to sate their urge to murder, or if they don’t, their punishment is that when they fall asleep they will go mad with bloodlust and brutally murder likely the only person who they’ve ever truly loved and been loved by. The Dark Urge can prevent the latter from happening by a hair but being thrust into that situation by no fault of your own is a horrifying fate. And don't think you're safe if you haven't romanced anyone; in that situation, it defaults to whoever the Dark Urge is closest to (whoever has the highest approval).
  • Then there’s the implicit suggestion that this is not the first time they have been thrust in this situation. How many times when growing up would the Dark Urge have been thrown into a similar situation, forced to indulge in brutal and sadistic crimes lest they be harshly punished by Bhaal? Goaded into killing anyone who got close to them by Sceleritas? Woken up to find the blood of a dear friend, pet or lover on their hands?
• What backstory we can piece together for a Dark Urge paints a horrifying picture of what their parentage cost them. At one point they were a normal child, playing in Baldur’s Gate, part of a happy adoptive family. Only for them to be haunted by dark murderous impulses until they lost control and murdered their parents, then suddenly thrust into an insane murder cult with no one who loved them. In the case of a Paladin, it’s implied that they tried to have a life away from Bhaal but ended up murdering their entire order when their Urges became too much to bear, and it’s likely this is the case for other classes too, since Sceleritas said they ‘always struggled to conduct themselves properly without [him]’. Eventually, they probably gave up on having a life outside of Bhaal when they tried and failed so many times to do so, when they found that everyone either feared them for their Bhaalspawn nature, or ended up dead when their body acted out of their control.
  • Related to this, there’s the matter of the role Sceleritas played in their upbringing. Sceleritas is undyingly loyal to the Dark Urge, giving them something close to unconditional love. He most likely was the only person who accepted the Dark Urge. The only person they could come back to time and time again, after every attempt to forge a life outside of Bhaal failed. And yet he was also the one encouraging the Dark Urge’s worst impulses and instincts, praising them for indulging their murderous desires. Always giving them a way to come back to Bhaal. It’s not hard to imagine that a traumatised Dark Urge found him to be the only source of safety and stability in their life, thus falling right into Bhaal’s trap.
• The line Relish: now your sins can be your own when you reject Bhaal. Implying that your character rejected Bhaal not out of a desire to be good, but because they didn’t want their loser god for a father taking all the credit for their misdeeds.
• The Sins of the Father ending is exclusive to the Dark Urge origin character, and is every bit as horrifying as you would come to expect should you choose to embrace its true heritage: Rather than allowing the Emperor to kill the Netherbrain and be rid of your parasite for good, the Dark Urge instead kills him and takes control of the Netherbrain for themselves, essentially hijacking the Cult of the Absolute's plans as Bhaal wanted them to do. Worse still, they corrupt not only the Netherbrain and the mind flayers, but even their companions with their homicidal impulses from being a Bhaalspawn, turning everyone connected to the Netherbrain into the Dark Urge's personal Ax-Crazy army. The last scene of the ending sees the Dark Urge sit themselves upon a throne as the mind flayers and a fleet of nautiloids join up with them as they begin a bloody conquest across Faerûn...

  The Dark Urge: In Bhaal's name.

  • You can actually still get this ending if you reject Bhaal and have him take away his evil essence from you. The only difference is Bhaal doesn't conquer shit.
    The Dark Urge: In MY name.
• Patch #5 expands on outcomes where the Dark Urge becomes Bhaal's champion, but pulls a Heel–Face Turn at the very last minute by destroying the Absolute. The narrator notes that Bhaal will be furious with the Dark Urge and will no doubt punish them, leading the Dark Urge with the options of either locking themselves in a jail cell or killing themselves as a final act of spite toward Bhaal (and spare countless from their "twitching knife-hand"). The former outcome does not have a happy ending for anyone involved, as within six months the Urge has consumed the Dark Urge to the point that they're a twitching, convulsing mess who either struggles to get coherent words out, spew platitudes and praises for Bhaal, or pitifully tries to fight off the Urge to no avail. Their Bhaalspawn heritage has fully taken them over, and worst of all, there's no stopping them. The moment the party falls asleep after having reunited six months after the Absolute's defeat, the Dark Urge creeps into camp with the sole purpose of killing them all.
  • Also, friendly note, if you are roleplaying as a good-aligned Dark Urge, some of the dialogue options imply that they are still aware and they are desperately trying to control themselves and stop themselves from harming their friends. Imagine looking through your own eyes while something else drives your body and fantasizes about killing your friends and potentially your lover, and you can do nothing but watch it happen. And I Must Scream doesn't even begin to cover whatever trauma the Dark Urge is experiencing at that moment.
    Narrator: Kill them all, mad Bhaal-bairn. Kill them all.

Companions

General

• A glitch would cause some companions to give you an absolute Death Glare when you tried to talk to them - and sometimes it would take a second before the game properly loads what they are supposed to say. This can lead to a surprising amount of suspense where you don't know if they're about to turn on you. But this can also become unintentionally hilarious when someone gives a Death Glare only for their face and tone to suddenly turn happy because they approve of whatever you just did.
  • What's more, sometimes a glitch could happen in which a choice they approve of will actually be interpreted as disapproval, meaning sometimes you may be doing something that's approved of by a companion only for them to suddenly give you a serious tongue lashing.

Astarion

• Pretty much Astarion's entire life prior to meeting the player: He died young — gruesomely, if his mentioning "retching up congealed blood" is anything to go by — awoke in his coffin and had to dig his way out of his own grave, at which point Cazador led him back to his palace for 200 years of mutilation, sexual slavery and every kind of abuse under the sun, unable to escape or even kill himself due to Cazador's Vampiric compulsion, only to be abducted by a Nautiloid, have a tadpole crawl into his head though his eye, get stuck on a flaming joyride through a literal Plane of Hell and crash-land in a grove of bloodthirsty goblins and angry druids.
• Astarion's fate if you give him up to Gandrel is absolutely horrible. He's given up by his allies, none of which seem to care all that much about the vicious betrayal he's been handed, and brought back to Baldur's Gate under duress. Then he was tortured to death by the Gur for information on their missing children. And THEN at some point, Cazador learns of his death and slaughters all of them, taking Astarion's body back with him to complete the ritual. If you go down into the chapel where the ritual is occurring, you'll find that Astarion has indeed been brought back as a zombie just to be fodder in the ritual. It's one of the most brutal endings possible for any of the companions.
• The Rite of Profane Ascension. A ritual so terrible it horrifies even Raphael. Seven vampiric spawn sacrificed to Mephistopheles to grant power to Cazador… and 7000 souls bound to them in blood. Everyone Astarion and his spawn ever brought back to Cazador, over centuries, was turned into spawn so Cazador would have souls for this infernal ritual. The only reason Astarion went through all two centuries of pain, misery and guilt was so Cazador could sacrifice him for power.
• Just seeing Astarion in the state he’s in after you beat Cazador is both incredibly tragic and horrifying. 200 years of pent-up anger and pain coming out in one terrible moment. All of these emotions coming out while Astarion, a vampire, is positively surrounded by blood. Neil Newbon holds back absolutely no punches here, there is none of Astarion’s signature sweet talking, flowery language or humour, just a man so blinded by the promise of power and by anger that he is willing to sacrifice 7000 souls just to get one up on his tormentor, not caring at all that he’ll lose himself and become just as bad as Cazador.
• Cazador's Palace is incredibly unsettling. Not only does the place appear to be infested with bats, but there are creepy mindbroken servants roaming around who serve Cazador of their own free will and bodies scattered from the latest party-turned-massacre. You can find the plain, squalid little "dormitory" for the Spawns and get an impression of the way they were played against each other to compete for the "favourite" room, as well as the "kennel", where Astarion was tortured so often. Exploring the place really gives you a vivid image of the bleak, depressing existence Astarion was living prior to the plot of the game—which is only heightened if you bring him along, as he gives some running commentary on everything.
  • Part of that commentary will have Astarion making a comment about "entertaining guests" in the guest bedroom. Previously, he only ever mentions the sexual abuse he endured being related to luring people, but that comment implies Cazador also had his spawn around as entertainment for his parties and let his party guests use them as sex slaves, which is just... ungodly horrifying.
• A more minor moment is when Astarion's vampirism is revealed and you offer to let him feed on you. Failing the persuasion checks needed to get him to stop will result in him draining you dry. The narrator's comments on how neither of you care anymore in the moment, along with Astarion's eyes turning black and red, are just the icing on the cake.
• The "bad" ending to Astarion's romance route is downright blood-curdling, due in large part to how accurately it follows the beats of many real-world abusive relationships: After years of hellish physical, mental/emotional and sexual suffering, the victim manages to get out and even finds a new partner who treats them with patience and affection and who they genuinely grow to love... Only to succumb to their own worst qualities and the habits they learned from their abuser, becoming the very monster they were running from in the first place. And thus the cycle begins anew...
  • More specifically, post-Ascension Astarion suddenly starts calling Tav "pet", heavily implying that he barely considers them a person anymore^note Probing his mind when he turns them into a vampire spawn confirms it outright, even before he assures them that he'll make them a full vampire "all in good time", and every interaction between them after that is dripping with Trouble Entendre and If I Can't Have You…. And there is literally nothing Tav can do to stop him or get away from him.
  • If you break up with spawn Astarion after the ending, he will be angry and heartbroken, but bitterly accepts it. Ascendant Astarion, however, laughs at you for thinking he would ever let you go.
    • You can actually break up with him after he ascends, but only if you never agree to being a vampire. Once he gets over it, he'll outright admit he would have used your love and "ruined" you, and that he somewhat respects you for leaving him. One almost has to wonder if—just as Cazador before him has self-loathing thoughts while deep in vampiric slumber—there isn't some teeny tiny bit of the old Astarion left in him that wants you to leave him because he knows he'll never treat you right anymore.
  • You can even roleplay your character as being put off by his transformation, heightening the horror factor; perhaps they agreed to the ritual because it seemed to be what he wanted, perhaps they were convinced killing those 7000 spawn was a mercy, perhaps they thought Cazador simply deserved the humiliation of having his life's work stolen. Regardless, Astarion can not do the ritual without the player's explicit complicity, as he needs them to show him his own back so he can re-carve the runes into Cazador. So they go through with it and immediately find that the man they loved is irreversibly corrupted and is little more than a perpetually angry, arrogant caricature of his former self who now treats them like a dog. Moreover, he is now insanely powerful and they are basically trapped with this horrible facsimile of him for eternity.
    • You can tell Ascended Astarion that you want to break up with him because he’s just another Cazador, he becomes furious and practically hisses at you in anger. Yet, more perhaps disturbingly he doesn’t deny it. As if deep down, by completing the ritual, Astarion knows exactly what he’s become - the very thing he hated the most. And again, you are complicit in this. You had the chance to talk him down, to talk some sense into him, save him from himself. But you didn’t.
• A bit of Paranoia Fuel to add to the general heartache of one of Astarion's (arguably) worst endings: If you just flat-out refuse to help him in the ritual chamber, he wishes you a Cruel and Unusual Death before cutting all ties with you. Assuming you survive this business with the Absolute, you'll likely spend the rest of your days knowing there's a vengeful — and not only a little sadistic — vampire spawn out there lurking in the shadows, waiting for you (and probably anyone you love) to lower your guard just enough...

Gale

• Gale isn't exactly hard to take down. And were he to die somewhere no one could get to his body within two days, BOOM!!! No more Sword Coast. And the rest of the world would've had no idea how or why it happened.
• It's entirely possible for the player to fail both dice rolls to rescue Gale from his portal. If that happens, Gale will be swallowed up by it, while desperately begging the player not to let him die. However, the portal vanishes and Gale is Lost Forever, presumably remaining trapped in the portal's magical dimension until the orb detonates. Adding extra nightmare fuel, it normally takes a few in-game days for the orb to begin destabilizing, so it's possible Gale spent days trapped and fully aware he was going to die, and being able to do absolutely nothing to stop it.

Halsin

Jaheira

Karlach

• Karlach's story and life is nightmarish in and of itself. Forcibly drafted to fight for an Archdevil as barely more than a child, including having her beating heart torn out and replaced with a flaming contraption that cannot sustain her outside of Avernus. Her choices include:
  • Go back to Avernus — a literal Hell with only a society of Hellspawn and demons for company, assuming her old Mistress Zariel doesn't recapture her, and hope that someone on the material plane can cook up a fix for her and get it to her for any hope of going home.
  • Have her Infernal Engine melt inside her, all over her remaining organs, and die a fiery, painful death.
  • Become a Mind Flayer, which will force out her Internal Engine and generate a new heart for her new form. But she still doesn't get to go home or partake in society. Not to mention she now has to suffer the same Horror Hunger all Mind Flayers have and consume brains.

Lae'zel

• Since the teaser showed us the end of ceremorphosis, the introduction cinematic decides to let us enjoy the beginning. Namely, the tadpole crawling into the victim's eye. First, we see it in third person, with poor Lae'Zel as the victim. Even knowing that she's a bloodthirsty, xenophobic Githyanki it's hard not to feel bad for her. And then you get to see it in first person.
• Just the whole premise of the game from Lae’Zel’s perspective. Mind Flayers are an existential evil for githyanki - all gith are taught to fear them from the moment they are born, their entire culture is built around resisting Illithid enslavement. Lae’Zel is kidnapped by them, infected with one of their parasites, and then after escaping one of their nautiloids by a hair crash lands in a completely alien land surrounded by completely alien people, all with the impending doom of ceremorphosis. The reason she’s so on edge to begin with is because she’s, rightfully, terrified.
• Over the course of Lae'zel's personal questline, your party arrives at a githyanki creche where a cure supposedly lies. The "cure" is a zaith'isk, a githyanki-built piece of Organic Technology using illithid components. Its true purpose is not to cure, however, but forcibly extract an infected githyanki's memories and parasite, killing them in the process. If you send Lae'zel into the zaith'isk and fail to convince her to stop, she'll suffer a permanent debuff to her ability checks, possibly the result of brain damage.
• If you complete the Creche Y'llek questline, Lae'zel will be branded a fugitive by Vlaakith and hunted by her own people. However, Kith'rak Voss will soon arrive to help her out of her predicament by telling her of his plan to free Orpheus, and will also reveal that Vlaakith never gave a damn about the Gith to begin with and her promises to "ascend" or "purify" Lae'zel are nothing more than a Deadly Euphemism. With your encouragement, Lae'zel can turn her back on the evil queen who's manipulated her so much... Or you can push Lae'zel in the opposite direction and encourage her to embrace Vlaakith anyway (and if you skip the Creche questline, Lae'zel is inclined to trust Vlaakith by default). Patch 5 shows just how doomed Lae'zel is if she accepts Vlaakith's offer of ascension. If you're not playing as her, she won't show up at the epilogue gathering, and Withers strongly implies you'll never see her again. And if you are playing as her, you get to see what Vlaakith has in store for her, as Lae'zel approaches her queen only to find herself surrounded by zombified Githyanki. A fate that now awaits her.
• If you're playing a Githyanki, you can actually join her in the above ending, as Lae'zel (and apparently Vlaakith) wholeheartedly agrees that you've also earned ascension. As Lae'zel is ascended first, Tav looks around at all the zombified Githyanki as it slowly sinks in what ascension really entails, but it's too late to warn Lae'zel (who appears too far gone anyway). It's even worse if you went through the Creche questline and subsequently encouraged Lae'zel to keep following Vlaakith, as Tav might be thinking "My God, What Have I Done?" as they realize that Voss was right.

Minsc

• A minor one with everything up above, but Orin the Red's final masterstroke for Minsc right before she kills him is to literally cook and feed Boo to him. Thankfully you stop her, but considering how Boo is at least as smart as the average human there's an element of cannibalism on top of the horror of being fed a beloved pet.

Minthara

• If playing as the Dark Urge and agreed to sleep with Minthara after helping her slaughter the inhabitants of the Emerald Grove, you later have the option to indulge in your murderous impulses just as she sleeps in your embrace. Doing so causes the scene to fade to black, followed by the sound of Minthara's neck being snapped by the Dark Urge. The scene then fades back in to a shot of Minthara's corpse on the ground.
• If Minthara survives the Emerald Grove questline in Act 1, the next time you meet her in Moonrise Towers sees her being punished by Ketheric Thorm for her failure to find the Astral Prism. She's sent to the dungeon below, where she is subjected to Mind Rape by the other cultists. If you do not stop the questioners from erasing her mind, or erase her mind yourself, Minthara is reduced to an Empty Shell devoid of any emotion and blindly loyal to the Absolute.

Shadowheart

• Shadowheart’s whole backstory, while doubling as a Tear Jerker, crosses into this. One day, she’s a happy kid in a loving family. As a part of a Selûnite coming of age ceremony, she is sent out into the woods to find her way home. Only for her to have been tracked the whole time by Sharran assassins who kidnap her, and her parents who sadly didn’t find out about their plot on time. Marked with a brand that causes her agonising pain whenever her parents suffer or whenever she acts against Shar’s will. Forced to forget all of her past, including her parents, who had to watch as their daughter was brainwashed into a Sharran. And worse, who had to watch as their own daughter tortured them, having no idea who they were. Why? Just to prove a point. Just because Shar wanted to corrupt a Selûnite child to prove that she’ll win.
  • Worse still? If Shadowheart becomes a Dark Justiciar, Shar is proven right. All of the torture Shadowheart and her family is put through worked.
• If Shadowheart becomes a Dark Justiciar, the ending of her questline is disturbing. She reaches the Inner Sanctum where her parents are located, where Shar appears and restores her memories of who they are, which horrifies her, and declares that her final test is to kill them. If she goes through with it, Shadowheart is completely broken by what she has done and can only plead for Shar to erase her memories again so that she can forever forget who she used to be, just as Shar wanted.

Wyll

• If you come across an imprisoned Mizora and think finishing her off there and then will break Wyll's chains, they will be horrified to discover they have condemned Wyll to an eternity as a glob of sentient flesh in Avernus.
  • Wyll's last words before being dragged down to Avernus? A simple, but horrified "Shit! No!". Wyll barely has time to react, and with the time he does have, he already knows what agony is in store for him, with no way to stop it.
• Displeased with Wyll wriggling out of his contract earlier than she'd like, Mizora presents him with a choice. He gets to walk away this very moment, but his Father is doomed; or his Father lives under demonic protection at the cost of Wyll serving under Mizora and Zariel for eternity.
  • Downplayed in that it's still possible to rescue Duke Ravengard if Wyll breaks the contract. However, Mizora will try to interfere and make things harder for you, and you can later discover that she will still attempt to take Ravengard's life after the contract formally ends if you are successful.