Happy birthday.
- The control procedure each Replicant Blade Runner (K in this case) has to be submitted to after a mission, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Voight-Kampff test. Instead of being calmly asked questions, you are peppered with very personal verbal abuse ("Do they keep you in a cell when they don't need you? Do you wish you could connect with people?") and required to repeat canned responses, trying to maintain your composure.
- Even more so when you realize this test was coldly engineered to ensure that legal replicants can take the day-to-day abuse of an openly racist/human-supremacist culture without flinching, much less actually snapping and doing anything like running amok or organizing a massive revolutionary army.
- Luv's killing of Coco, simply by cracking the back of his neck and causing him to bleed out his face. For extra horror points, viewers who look closely will notice that his upper row of teeth are overextended when he hits the ground - Luv hit him so hard his entire skull was dislocated.
- Wallace's creepy meeting with the female replicant he creates and then kills. Or more precisely, guts directly in the stomach and laments about angels, godhood, and replicant reproduction. It's all very disturbing.
- Luv's surprise missile strike on K and the hobos living in the remains of San Diego. There are two things that make this scene especially disturbing: 1) the sight of the hobos being blown into Ludicrous Gibs, and 2) the complete lack of emotion Luv shows in killing them, made worse by the fact she's just casually having her nails done while blowing (sort of) innocent people to kingdom come!
- The tracks Wallace and Furnace from the movie’s soundtrack. Hearing the tracks by themselves without movie context really sends a chill. The ghostly vocalisations that phase in and out bump up the eeriness.
- Luv’s fixation on K, her target, is disturbingly akin to a stalking Yandere-esque infatuation. She twice states that she likes him to Joshi (before killing her), breaks into his apartment and forgoes multiple opportunities to kill him. Then there’s Luv’s reaction to Joi, K’s AI hologram girlfriend: immediate cruel hostility and needlessly destroys Joi on the spot in front K who’s Forced to Watch which has all hallmarks of spiteful jealousy. She even gives K a Forceful Kiss after stabbing him.
- K's fight with Deckard takes place in his hideout, an abandoned casino in what used to be Vegas, that has a holographic projector of famous performers such as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe that ends up turning on during their fight. The problem is the projector is very old, and results in scenes where the Elvis and his dancers are performing in total silence, and whenever the sound does come on, it's for a quick second and it's very glitchy and unrecognizable like a faulty radio broadcast. The effect coupled with the flashing lights and the sounds of K's and Deckard's punches is incredibly unnerving.
- K drowning Luv. Not only is it the cap on an incredibly tense fight sequence, but Luv's muffled screams under the water as she tries to fight back sound like the pure, feral embodiment of rage.
- The "farms" themselves, and the food available to most people. Basically giant maggot breeding pens, that makes protein. Food in this timeline is just Nightmare Fuel piled on top of terror. For example, K's meal appears to be gelatinous tentacles, which are so bad, Joi attempts to "cook" him a meal and overlays what seems to be steak and potatoes over the bowl of "food" via hologram. It barely seems to work, as the clear, slimy tentacles are still very visible.
- To drive this even further, we see a standard "farmer" doing his daily chores on his "farm." Between the heavy environmental suit, decontamination process and the fact that every building is wrapped in heavy plastic to keep whatever chemical soup exists in, and the terrible environment out... the farms in this case look more like temporary cities that spring up around chemical clean-up efforts.
- The furnace scene. As K wanders through the abandoned factory, he slowly begins to find himself in the place from his one "human" memory. At first, he seems to not really believe what he's seeing... and then it dawns on him. The toy horse that he lost might still be hidden there, and if it is, then K might very well be the Half-Human Hybrid he's looking for. As K walks through the dark factory, the music begins to pick up in intensity, and K slowly walks towards something that should be completely impossible. He then sticks his hand into a pile of ash, withdraws the horse, and quietly stares in abject horror. The entire scene is like something out of a bad dream, and the agonizingly long time it takes for the scene to finish only adds to the horror.
- The entire setting of the film is nightmarish. Despite fantastic technological advances, planet Earth has been all but completely scoured of life due to unchecked industrial expansion and corporate interests. The corporations have so much power, in fact, that one high ranking agent is able to infiltrate the city police headquarters, commit theft and two separate acts of murder, and walk out without even a hint of facing consequences. Common folk live desperately lonely lives even though they dwell in boroughs so crammed that they make Megacity One look like an open park, and most of them don't have access to anything beyond the barest subsistence commodities. The one glimpse we see of children in the film is a hellish sweatshop run by an openly abusive and greedy proprietor who claims to be performing a public service. And outside LA proper we see nothing but vast wastelands and empty space. Overall, life is brutal, short, and cheap. Sweet dreams.
- The poor state of the natural environment can double as a Tear Jerker for environmentally-minded viewers.
- "99.9% detoxified water." Not only is it creepy that they have to state that everytime but it indicates the water table is as polluted and dead as everything else. Also what's in the .1% they can't clean? Chances are humanity is slowly poisoning itself everytime it drinks or tries to clean up.
- A further environmental one. A caption at one point confirms the film takes place from June 30th onwards. Late June/early July in LA and there is snow on the ground and multiple blizzards. Actual winter is probably even worse and this at 34 north. Sure shows how badly screwed up the planet is...
- A subjective example, but some viewers watched this film in a theatre that had quite a bassy surround system. Every crunch of bone, squish of flesh and splash of blood was painfully visceral and left people feeling not only nauseous and squicked out, but also quite unnerved. More than a few people walked out of this movie based on the sound design alone, to say nothing of the oppressive atmosphere of the setting. Big props to Theo Green, the sound designer for this film.
- The giant holographic Joi. In sharp contrast to the one we've been seeing, her skin is unnaturally pink, she's wearing an artificial blue wig, spouting canned lines, and her eyes are fully black. Combine that with the dark implications for K's "relationship," and one would never expect to be so unnerved by naked Ana de Armas.
