While the game still has some classic funny aspects of Ironhide's other games, it's very much a Darker and Edgier title. All spoilers are unmarked!!!
- The general state of the world. If Kingdom Rush universe was a colourful and blooming one, this one is devastated by nuclear war, turning much of the land into the wastelands, affecting wildlife in worst possible way and throwing whatever ecosystem existed out of the window. Survivors are forced to get into big groups to survive and often go mad and start a rampage killing everyone they see. And that's not even getting into what other villainous groups exist...
- Wasteland world is a first dose of Scenery Gorn and it is as scary as it is majestic. Abandoned barns, chemical plants, the entire cities, all destroyed beyond repair, once used by humanity and suddenly silent. Vicious sandstorms often occur, with tornadoes further destroying the bare lands. And it's populated by people who went mad and decided to kill or abduct other survivors. And that's just the beginning.
- Swamps are a home to a ton of Nuclear Mutant creatures and they are surprisingly freaky. Gigantic mosquitoes sucking out blood, Weirdeers able to walk on two hind legs and grow a second head, Man Pigs that behave like both, reduced to primitive animalistic instincts because of radiation. The list goes on.
- Swamps themselves, for that matter, being a deadly place further tarnished by nuclear leftovers.
- Arachnox, especially to arachnophobes and people who feared Noxious Creepers from Kingdom Rush. A gigantic, radiation-infected, seemingly intelligent spider with acid green skin and red eyes that has an endless supply of it's own mutated breed. While antagonists out of this world had some reasons to attack, this creature simply wants to have everyone for dinner. And as you beat it, it returns, stronger each time until you squish it for good. Eventually, you learn that it does have a reason for stalking you, and it's not hunger, but it guarding the territory for the Order. This spider was tamed by this strange organization, showing how powerful they are.
- Psychopolis might seem like the most well preserved town... at first. But it is a city ravaged and taken control of by a powerful psychic, turning it into a borderline Eldritch Location. Time and space anomalies are abundant, objects levitate above ground while buildings look like they were torn to pieces but are still kept together and it's denizens are freaky looking constructs made out of simple city objects, bulldozer ones looking especially creepy.
- Everything about the Order. Oppressive, totalitaristic, surprisingly advanced army hell bent on spreading it's rule across the entire world.
- The soldiers look not too dissimilar from actual Nazis, from their similar helmets to their fanatical devotion to the cause. And this is without applying the futuristic aspects and creepy look of the rest of their armor.
- In a showcase of how much they are in control, it is revealed at the end of Wasteland chapter that Junkers, who kidnapped Scavengers across it, were working for them, as a squad of Order Footmen swoops in on a gunship, abducts the kidnapped ones and flies off as Scavengers are only able to watch in shock.
- As you progress through the Swamp, you start encounter more and more Order labs. Strange experiments were conducted there by Order scientists, some of which resulted in the creation of mutants encountered there. That's right: Order conducted human experimentation, just like the Nazis had a practice of doing.
- Psychopolis? Also their doing, though indirect one. They had experimented with psychokinesis, resulting in creation of Mad Esper and Wifi Babies, weaponised artificial children that were experimented on. No wonder Esper went rogue and decided to take revenge.
- As you venture deeper into their Base, things quickly shift from harmless to more terrifying as ski center is replaced by concentration camps, factories and mines where strange red material is mined by kidnapped survivors. Have we mentioned who do these guys resemble?
- The Reveal of the true nature of the Order: they're not fanatical maniacs, but Brainwashed and Crazy survivors under the mind control of the Big Bad, behaving that way to fit his vision of a perfect ruthless soldier. And then you remember how many have you killed and things get really dark.
- Big Bad himself, Hadron, is an unholy blend of a Nazi General, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, General Hux and Vez'Nan. He's a ruthless dictator ruling with an iron fist who wants to spread his regime and total control to the whole world just because he can. And he has masterminded the entire game, abducting people for his army using Junkers as pawns, creating experiments and mutants to further his conquest, being the reason why Mad Esper, the ruler of Psychopolis, brought it to its state. And considering he is the only that is not a brainwashed survivor, he, alone, from scratch built a high-tech totalitarian regime, hoarded soldiers and used it for conquest. We never learn how and when he managed to obtain such strategic skills, mind control and other tech, create the Base or simply anything else, only adding to the mystery of this dangerous man who built such a regime out of nothing. Knight of Cerebus doesn't even begin to describe it.
- At the end of the game, he reveals a trump card in his fight against Scavengers: his own personal giant flying mecha. Not only does it have an even greater resemblance to Darth Vader, but it also shows his power level with how he obliterates scores of Scavengers with lasers, electricity and even more mind-controlled troops, obviously taking pleasure in doing so.
- His death. While relatively simple, it stands out from defeats of other villains. Many Kingdom Rush villains died quietly or quickly, disintegrating or simply falling over, Rollerdozer didn't actually die, Failed Experiment was an animalistic creation that died quickly and so did Mad Esper. Hadron? His mecha turns out to not have an eject button, having a prolonged explosion chain from the sustained damage with Hadron screaming bloody murder the entire time as he is helpless to do anything about the situation. And judging by the fact that his scream lasts for the entirety of defeat animation, he didn't die quickly either, enduring each and every single explosion before finally dying. Of course, he very much deserved it, but it was still a horrible death.
- Though things aren't as dark after defeating the Order, some scary things are still present in the Underground:
- The sheer Paranoia Fuel that you can fall into a hole you didn't know was under fragile ice is very real. This game adds a threat that there might be something lurking down there.
- Kritts are a race of gigantic humanoid rats who seek to take over the surface after spending so much time trapped in caves. Imagine a Swarm of Rats, but hundreds times more dangerous sweeping the surface.
- It's later revealed they're working alongside also creepy race for bats called Nychts, who happen to be literal vampire bats. And they wield what is essentially magic.
- Whiskeletons are surprisingly terrifying. You play the level normally and then these guys appear out of nowhere in the middle of the path and start obliterating your troops by breathing poison on them. A hell of a Jumpscare.
- Titanycht is a cross breed champion with cybernetic fists. Not only it is an absolute menace, but it delivers the very first Hero Killer Cliffhanger after his fight at the end of Part 1, where it strikes Marc. Thankfully, he survives by blasting his way out of the beast, but it was very close. And then it comes back two more times, each time imbued by the magic of Nychts even more.
- The state of the Underground. Apparently, it's filled with remnants of civilization, except absolutely ravaged by rats. And then at the heart of it lies a freaky upside down castle whose top looks like a vampire head with glowing eyes.
- Monarchs of the Night, while not as dark as Hadron, still provide some scares. Dreadfur is an absolute Blood Knight with miniguns for main weapon that's grinning and laughing maniacally as he obliterates your troops with absolutely hellish barrages of spiked balls or ground slam that sets the ground on fire. Then he dies and his wife, Brella, a full-fledged humanoid vampire, comes out and resurrects her husband as gigantic skeleton, starting the first actual Dual Boss in history of Ironhide game. And this is the moment where the abundance of Whiskeletons is brought from 40 to 100 as they come from the graveyard in the center of the map, from Dreadfur's skeletal bombs and from Brella's magic. That's right: Brella somehow transforms your people into mindless rat skeleton monsters.
- While wasteland bandits, nuclear mutants, psychic constructs and futuristic oppressors make sense, as well as presence of intelligent rats, it's never explained just how the hell the vampires imbued with what can't be called anything other than magic came to be.
- The fact that Scavengers spent three whole days trying to find the exit after everything they just went through. It's a miracle how none of them dropped of hunger or exhaustion. Had they been they for longer, they may not have had a chance to get out at all.
