Nightmare Fuel / Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story

End meguca suffering, come to Kamehameha.^Explanation Come to Kamihama, where magical girls can be saved.

While Magia Record at face value could be considered as Puella Magi Madoka Magica Lite, remember this is the surreal, Mind Screw-y, Neon Genesis Evangelion-esque Magical Girl Genre Deconstruction created by the Urobutcher himself that we're still talking about. So indeed, this game unsurprisingly has a fair share of its own nightmare fuel.

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. As the franchise is also well-known for its sudden and rapid descent into madness, many of the spoilers appear early on. You Have Been Warned.

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General

• Thanks to Gekidan INU Curry's unique art style, the witches, familiars, rumors, and their barriers in general are nightmare fuel.
  • Anytime Inucurry writes a scenario in the game, it would almost guaranteed to be a lot darker than other stories in the same event. Madoka's (though in a lesser degree) and Homura's Valentine story, the Holy Quintet's Summer event story, and Nagisa's debut event are of those case, and it shows.
• The slightly distorted voice whenever a rumor is described is unsettling.
  • Not to mention when Yachiyo stumbles upon a weird creature resembling a familiar which spreads rumors. Non-magical girls, fortunately (or unfortunately), cannot perceive them as anything than humans.
  • The live-stage adaptation has the rumors being told as songs sung by the main characters. The songs are old horror oral story-like rhymes, while in the background the backup dancers depict the rumor visually. As Sana tells about the story of a lonely AI only wishing to have friends, the dancers are trapped in clear glass boxes while soundlessly screaming and banging their fists against the walls.

Video Game: General & Main Story

• The Wings of the Magius while presenting themselves as saviors of magical girls resembles more of a cult than an advocacy group or a normal band of magical girls. It doesn't help that their members are cloaked in hoods. Their methods to achieve their goals are terrifying such as allowing normals and non-sympathetic magical girls to be victimized by rumors and brainwashing those who wouldn't cooperate.
• The Rumor of the Rule of Ending Friendships forces people to end friendships for good even if one of the parties of a feud is willing to make amends. According to the rumor, if you tell someone that your friendship is over, you shouldn't apologize for it. If you do, floating boxes will kidnap you, and you'll be brainwashed into cleaning a staircase for eternity.
  • The fact that a lot of the Rumors really like using brainwashing to feed on their victims, and it is later revealed that all Rumors are at least semi-sentient.
• The form of the witch Candy at first may appear to be a cute pink bunny but turns to a nightmarish bug-like form whenever it attacks or is seriously wounded. She is revealed to have pelvic bones as her skull, and her ears are actually her mouth that she uses to bite on her enemies like giant shears. This makes her eerily similar to the infamous dessert witch of the original series.
• The fact that in Kamihama, if a magical girl's soul gem becomes too tainted they could unleash a monster from within themselves, referred to as Doppels, is nightmare fuel inducing nevermind that they could use this power for whatever purpose they seem fit or their soul gems becomes stainless after.
  • A lot of the Doppels are Body Horror. Yachiyo's leg becomes oversized and grows eyes on it, Mifuyu's tongue gets so swollen that she can't talk, and Felicia practically disembowels herself when she uses it.
  • While the Magical Girl using a Doppel remains human, the descriptions given of some of the Doppels suggest that they're mostly independent during the short time when they're active. They represent their "master" overwhelmed completely by a single emotion, without any real input from the more rational parts of her mind. The Doppel is effectively a Witch while it exists, and so some of the protagonists are apparently afraid to use theirs in places or around people who they care about. Kaede's Doppel could turn her favorite spots into expanses of rotting moss, and one form of Sana's is incapable of distinguishing between allies and opponents when it starts swinging its massive bladed pendulum. Some moments in the game's narrative involve characters being deeply concerned about a Doppel being released in a place where it could cause harm, so this doesn't seem to just be flavor text. It's likely that at least some of the most powerful Doppels, particularly Madoka's, would be so destructive that they could never actually be used even if Gameplay Story Segregation allows it during fights.
  • There's an element of fridge horror, too, to the fact that a Magical Girl is apparently conscious when using her Doppel. They're so overwhelmed by the single emotion that it represents, that the experience has to be comparable to delirium. Given just how terrible some of the emotions involved are, this goes part of the way to explaining why many Magical Girls who know about the Doppel system still make sure to go into battle with enough Grief Seeds to prevent a transformation. Beyond that, though, a character would most likely remember what they did as a Doppel, and why they did it. The decision to do something terrible would always feel like it was, on some level, their own.
  • The Gameplay and Story Integration also counts. For context, a Doppel can only be summoned in-game when you overcharge until you reach 200 MP, which means they have to stay alive up to that point - with all the fatigue and general arduousness of battle it goes along with. They'll become some sort of Shell-Shocked Veteran due to being so long there, and thus, a Doppel can be considered a catharsis of all the built up despair, from being overwhelmed by it all (it also goes along with the Soul Gem being clean lore-wise). Letting one come out from your magical girls is essentially torture in itself.
• Chapter 8 had the Magius stop "playing nice". Given that they had already done atrocious and questionable things before, naturally they resorted to even worse actions. They turned the White and Black Feathers into basically like zombies that cant be reasoned with bent on killing magical girls. Also we see Holy Mami willing to do the same but unlike the feathers still has consciousness on her actions and genuinely believes that she is saving magical girls in the long run remarking that she is still the same helpful girl who advocates for others before joining the Magius.
• It's kinda refreshing that the little Kyubey who is also the player isn't devoid of emotions like the Kyubey of the original series. However when you are reminded that the incubators who exhibits emotions are considered insane, maybe the normal Kyubeys will eventually come after you and lock you up in a incubator mental institution, exterminated for good, or assimilated to the Hive Mind.
• Stacey the Rooftop Witch is a long-legged mirror with a profile of a porcelein lady statue. If you look closely the real "face" could be on the upper rim of the mirror frame.
  • The witch's familiar Ekaterina is a green pointing finger with rings. One of the attacks of the familiar is moving forward to "touch" the player's magical girls.
• Teresa, the pendelum witch's Slasher Smile on her bob. Her "face" being upside down as well as when she spins her "head" to attack makes it all more uncanny.
• Lucy's familiars Coco is a signpost with a brain on its top and its signage as deformed heads. These heads stretches themselves when the familiar attacks.
• Shin the Babysitter Witch hates children, and will especially target babies to kill. When you fight her, in background you can hear endless baby noises gurgling far away. Her drop item, the Nanny's Grip, is actually an abortion tool◊ - and on the witch herself, that thing is dripping with white... something. You're left to wonder just what kind of magical girl that created this witch.
• Only a Madoka spin-off could make something as mundane as opening a menu scary. For context, the game has an archive in which magical girls, Memoria, cutscenes, Doppels, and witches/Uwasa (along with their familiars) are listed. The music for the general archive page, as well as the first three sub-pages, is a classical piece reminiscent of that in the original anime's more emotional scenes, but is otherwise nothing unusual. On the page listing witches, Uwasa, and familiars that you have fought, the music is a soothing piece combining the violin with chimes and horns. The nightmare fuel comes in when looking at the list of Doppels. The music that plays here sounds like something out of a horror movie, with no discernible melody. It's just chimes and something resembling both white noise and someone in a hushed voice trying to speak. Not helping the matter is the fact that, due to the investment required to unlock a magical girl's Doppel (and the fact that Giovanna's appearance in Chapter 3 doesn't add her to the archive), the list of Doppels is going to be missing a lot of entries, if not all, for a long while.
• The events of of the first half of Chapter 12 in Arc 2: Mikoto first kills Lil’Kyubey, preventing Iroha from merging with him and Ui to become Infinite Iroha. She then spreads nightmares and corruption, quickly affecting all Magical Girls ^note  except for Iroha, Ui, Karin, Kagome, the other fraction leaders and those in Puella Care (asides from Mitama sending them all into a unwakeable slumber while her mirror clones of the girls attack any that are still awake. And when Ui tries to use her magic, Mikoto attacks and kills her, taking her collection ability for herself. And when Iroha and the other surviving girls try to stop her, she responds by taking control of the Doppels belonging to the leader’s friends, forcing them to fight to the death. Puella Care then try to turn the favor into Iroha’s favor by supposedly siding with Mikoto and sacrifice themselves to save her when Mikoto tries to absorb her, dying in her place and leaving Iroha and Kagome left. Then Iroha has to watch as her friends succumb to the corruption to give her a chance to complete the time-traveling mirror, only to learn that their plan of travelling through time to save Ui and Lil’Kyubey won’t work. In the end, all Iroha and Kagome can do is use Kagome’s abilities to create a message that Iroha (inadvertently) sends back to the past, leaving them to to witch out while Yachiyo and the others witch out themselves around them. In the end, Karin is the only surviving Magical Girl on the side of good and the last we see of her is her heading to her last battle with Alina.
  • Just the fact that it had gotten so bad, all Iroha can do is pray for salvation while she witches out. Her sister? Killed and absorbed by Mikoto. The other fraction leaders? Killed by their own comrades. Puella Care? Killed and absorbed protecting her. Her friends, the ones she bonded with throughout the whole story and lived with? She has to watch them witch out, while her own Soul Gem hatches. Thank god she inadvertently sends Kagome’s message back, because otherwise, Mikoto would had won.
• Losing to Sarah Mirabilis W (Mikoto’s witch) in the final chapter gives you a nice shot of her face [1]◊ The fact that she’s staring directly at you only makes it worse.

Video Game: Side Story and Events

• The Amane sisters' wish "to never hate each other" while heartwarming at hindsight is terrifying if you take into account how one of the girls in the original series went. Basically they are forced to be friendly to each other or at least not hostile no matter what.
  • And this is better than they were before. Their sidestories reveal that Kamihama City has a city-wide social conflict that causes segregation between east and west side of the city. Because they were raised by their parents to hate people from the other side of the fence after their parents were divorced, Tsukuyo and Tsukasa can't stand each other, despite knowing that it isn't right to hate the other just because of their lifestyle until they made their contract. And it isn't just affecting them; said conflict causes multiple cases of horrific bullying at school. The Mizuna Ward is the worst of it, but the Shinsei Ward where our heroes live isn't far behind, as seen from Rena, Ren, and Mito's stories. And as seen from Kanagi's story, what is the reason of that prejudice? None; if there's a reason, people had since long forgotten about it.
• Ayaka Mariko's wish is a reason for her optimistic and cheerful personality. Her profile however suggest that the wish basically forced her to be a Stepford Smiler; She is said to "sometimes feel guilty" about her wish which resulted in her "new, fake outlook on life". Before that she was The Cynic.
• Mitama's wish in order to become a Magical girl is "to become the one that destroys Kamihama". Considering that Kamihama is still standing by the start of the Main Story and Mitama is already a magical girl, one may think that the ruckus involving rumors, the Magius, and the overpowered wishes has something to do with Mitama and that the city will be inevitably destroyed. Thank god that her sister wished to prevent the effects.
• Green Jesper Diviners' event story answers a somewhat common question about magical girls' existences; what will happen if the world at large knows about the Puella Magi? Tokime Village is the home of a clan that produces girls so they can contract for the sake of Japan. The citizens ritualized the magical girl contract as some sort of patriotic duty toward their homeland and don't really bat an eye when their girls go off to fight Witches and get horrifically injured. When the girls' Soul Gems get clouded, they will leave the village to die alone.
  The Tokime Clan's Oath: The blood of the Tokime is the blood of Japan.
  • Our hero, Chiharu, is called into the village because her kinswoman, Sunao, had 'fled her ancestral duty' by making a contract out of her own will. If she refuses to contract, she'll get killed. If she digs up too much without her clansmen Shizuka and Sunao's support, she'll get killed. When she saves Shizuka from being pushed into a river by the clan elder, they find that the riverbed is littered by countless skeletons of their kinsmen, drowning when they almost turn into a Witch. The clan elder's bloodline, the Mikoshiba, had usurped the clan from the main branch and has been selling the clan girls' wishes to rich and powerful politicians for money. These politicians knew about the magical girls, yet they did nothing but capitalize on their suffering. Humans Are Bastards, indeed.
    • However, even after the corrupt influence in the clan has been rid with, it is revealed that the Tokime had always ritualized the magical girl contract since the beginning. The elder simply took advantage of her own clan's practices for her goal.
  • The second part of the event reveals that the gentle and kind Sunao was the one who always attempted to assassinate Chiharu in the first part. She became the elder's assassin because the elder is holding her parents hostage, all because Sunao had made contract without the clan's instruction.
  • The reason why the village is not visible from satellite and has no phone signal is because the village is inside the Witch barrier of their own magical girl ancestor, the aforementioned Lucy. Lucy wants to go home to her village, but because the Witch barrier is a Self-Inflicted Hell toward its Witch, Lucy is cursed to wander forever despite her home is already at sight.
• Crimson Resolve:
  • The event story shows a city that is directly affected by the Magius' Witch hoarding in Kamihama. Because the Witch drought in the Futatsugi City, the magical girls population in the city is segregated by organized gangs to ration the Grief Seeds remaining in the city. These gangs fight constantly in order to survive, even desperate enough to the point of forcing each other to Witch out just to have more Grief Seeds for their own use. A lot of girls died horrifically in these fights.
  • Ryugasaki's boss, Juri, comes across as incredibly violent and volatile, largely because her weapon is a flamethrower. She roasts three girls in a skirmish against Torayamachi, and burns two more in a bad end. She also scares one of her own lackey, who stole Grief Seed ration, with a torture threat so much that the lackey immediately goes Witch out of fright.
  • Yuna's personal magic apparently causes her to hear the voice of her dead friends. At first, she only hears her senpai's voice telling her encouraging words, but as the civil war for the city's Grief Seed supply caused numerous casualties, her magic keeps adding more and more voices screaming for vengeance and lamenting their misfortunes, drowning her senpai's voice. Then she finds out their situation is because of the Wings of Magius's stealing Witches from other cities. Her Sanity Slippage is haunting, and she continues on with her appearance in the main story as this hoarse-voiced, dead-eyed girl who can shifts from benevolent yet silly Reasonable Authority Figure to a visibly violently insane warlord.
• It's Okay to be Clumsy event:
  • Riko found herself in what seems to be a bento-themed witch labyrinth. The witch seems to be influencing Riko, feeding on her insecurity about her clumsiness which is an obstacle to her goal of preparing a bento for her idol Miss K. There she encounters a shadow version of herself holding her treasured whale knife which Miss K gave to her. Then the copy proceeds to stab Miss K who somehow found herself inside the barrier. Thankfully it's just an illusion, but then it threatens to slice up Riko and cook her, which is a messed up reference to taunts against her by her peers of her clumsiness when handling a knife.
  • When the bento barrier shifted to a darker blue version of its self. The presentation of bento ingredients from the intro is repeated again but this time the ingredients color is discolored with the ominous "The Plot" soundtrack playing in the background.
• Beachside Bonds
  • The event starts with the Holy Quintet going to a beach outing. Nothing really scary, just some rumors about not getting close to a cat named Kei even though INU Curry is involved in writing the story. Wrong... For starters, Homura while sleeping with her friends at a beachside lodge experienced sleep paralysis and encounters a shadowy figure muttering "all wrong". The figure then goes to a sleeping Sayaka as Homura helplessly watches. Then the figure notices Homura and speaks to her directly. Homura ends up in tears and fully wakes up, but thankfully no one was hurt. Then it turns out that this is no normal sleep paralysis encounter and the figure is in fact, Kei, a ghost whose spirit was unwittingly bound by a Witch that lives in her suicide location.
  • Then Kei proceeds to possess Madoka so she could kill her friend Yuu. Originally the two planned to drown themselves but apparently Yuu survived. Homura chases Madoka to a dark void, where her time magic doesn't work. Thankfully Ren was able to enter and help Homura free Madoka from being possessed.
  • As if those aren't enough, "Nagisa's Wish" event reveals that Yuu survived the lovers' suicide and is now going around Mitakihara as an amnesiac serial killer clown who steals and sells the organ of her victims. The event reveals that the suicide scarred her face into having Glasgow Grin, which in she hides in public with a face mask like Kuchisake-onna urban legend, and she has a constantly-updating notebook listing "bad people" - who will turn into her serial-killing victims.
• In the collaboration event with Tart Magica, the three sisters are significantly more dangerous than they were in the manga - and they're already extremely dangerous to begin with. They practically have New Powers as the Plot Demands because they exploit more on their magical girl pawns' wishes to grant them various magic skills. As result, Minou alone is capable of seeing the future, trapping Tart inside a dream world separated from linear time progress, using teleportation into a pocket dimension, etc.
  • Isabeau's Witch form is sure more creepy and disgusting when moving and in color.
• Halloween Kanagi's transformation video is very unsettling. Kanagi is trapped inside a glass box, before the box tips over and thrown Kanagi around. The walls of the box slowly close in on her and we see several seconds of this skimpily-dressed girl squirms around trying to push back against the glass. A real-life footage of what appears to be blood spilling from off-screen into another glass box and the blood forms into another Kanagi, frozen in place akin of a music box's statuette. A real Kanagi then pushes off the screen depicting this to stare blankly at the audience.
• Yuna's transformation isn't pretty either. She is seen crying alone in a dark room, before the horn gradually growing on her face, causing pain and making her writhing like a trapped animal. Several weapons, possibly from her deceased friends, stabbed on her back at once, blood is seen pouring out from her back and head, uncensored. Yuna then forcefully pulls a kanabo on her back before getting electrocuted, then staring at the audience blackly, any expressions of wrath and sadness - including the blood and tears - from mere seconds ago just simply gone as if nothing ever happened, implying her transformation into a new person.

Anime

• Episode 1:
  • Iroha's dream of a mysterious girl is much worse in the anime. The girl instead is a glitching black figure with glowing white eyes. (pictured above)
  • Might be a case of Unreliable Narrator, but it's unsettling that Iroha is talking to Kyubey while the familiar-like creatures are putting children in bags.
• Episode 2:
  • Rebecca's Witch-kiss victims turn into wooden marionettes who get herded by her familiar Joseph. Rebecca herself gets a redesign where the multiple eyes in her wool become significantly more realistic, and her eye attack turning from Eye Beam like in the game into Rebecca gouging her own eyeballs and throwing them at the magical girl.
  • When it's time for the Friendship Ending Rumor, the anime manages to make it WORSE. In order for the Rumor to take effect, a person needs to write their names on the steps of a specific staircase, meaning they are fully aware of the Rumor and are intentionally invoking it. Also, instead of boxes coming to take away the person that apologizes, it's a horde of chain monsters, with only the person who is about to lose their friend being able to see them. When Kaede gets kidnapped by the chain monsters, the monsters mindrape Rena.
• Episode 4:
  • The circumstances of Candy's appearance in the anime. The grief seed of the witch hatched in the middle of a grocery having a limited sale event. If Yachiyo, Iroha, Tsuruno or any magical girls weren't present, Candy could have killed dozens. Candy herself is an example which deceptively takes the form of a cute pink rabbit as its default form. It can turn its head into insectoid mandibles to attack which is reminiscent of the infamous dessert witch in the original series.
  • When Tsuruno, who isn't writing a name in an ema plaque to serve as a backup for Iroha and Yachiyo, tries to follow the two into the Seance Shrine, the Uwasa manifests as a bunch of shadowy arm pulling her back. Those hands end up never leaving her until she write in an ema plaque.
• Episode 5:
  • The fake Ui can only repeats with blank eyes the words she says in the magical girls' dream, "Go to Kamihama City, where magical girls can be saved." When Iroha rejects the illusion, she sees the Uwasa's victims lying unconscious beside the wax figures of their loved ones. The wax figures are glitching.
  • The fake Mifuyu tries to coax Yachiyo to fall victim to the Uwasa by gaslighting her with their past relationship. When Yachiyo resists, the Uwasa's mark stamps all over her face, trying to influence her mind in an attempt to break her spirit.
    Fake Mifuyu: *serenely smiling* I'm the real Mifuyu. I fit perfectly into the hole in your heart.
  • Uwasa of Commoner's Horse gets a redesign that makes it incredibly intimidating. Instead of the goofy snail-like frog like in game, it becomes a giant Eastern dragon that roars like an elephant, spraying explosive bubbles from its trunk. It's extremely agile despite its size and heals every damage it received when the attack connects.
  • When Giovanna comes out, Iroha loses control and Giovanna becomes closer to a Witch than to a Doppel. Giovanna wraps Iroha, whose face now sporting a white mask with black eyes and wide grin, and spirits her along as the half-Witch goes berserk on the Uwasa. Giovanna ends up tearing the Commoner's Horse and pecking it until it dies despite its Healing Factor.
• The Rumor of the Lucky Owl Water. In the game, the rumor only involved a normal looking man who gives out miraculous water on his stall. In the anime it's a shady place run by a familiar-looking man, where familiar looking waitresses gives away bottled water to guests. What's horrifying is Felicia and Iroha were oblivious to them until they learn about the rumor.
• The rumor spreader, while they didn't interact with the main characters like in the game, are more uncanny in the anime. Their paper-thin figure looks horrifyingly out of place in 3D space and you can see normal people being friendly with them unaware of their true nature.
• Whenever someone uses a doppel in the anime. While doppel itself are both awesome and nightmare fuel inducing, the anime boosts up the creepiness factor. Prior to the unleashing of one's doppel, the user's face becomes white, they gain a slasher smile, and their sclera becomes pitch black and loses their pupils. In one instance of Iroha using her doppel, a doppelganger with said creepy face appears behind her startling her.
  • The anime made it apparent the dangers of the doppel system. Though a magical girl could weaponize their doppel and help them fight against witches, uwasa and other enemies. The average magical girl would have little control when a doppel get unleashed. If their soul gem becomes too tainted, their doppel gets unleashed. If they happen to be at a place other than a witch barrier they could potentially kill innocent people. Imagine if a magical girl's doppel appears in the middle of a supermarket, school or a hospital.
• The heroes' first encounter with the Magius. The colors are virtually watered down and the Black Feathers introduction portrayed them more as a cult. Their trance like speech doesn't help. Then they offer to recruit Felicia and appeals to her vendetta against witches and Felicia accepts their offer. Felicia's fierce grin at the end of the episode is nightmare fuel in itself.
• When the Amane twins release the Symbol Witch on our heroes from Alina's portable cubed barrier, you will notice that the familiars are suffering and sickly from being fused with each other with Old Dorothy's disease-ridden Pathogen Tempera. Because nothing spells Mad Artist better than torturing the already tortured soul of a former magical girl for sake of art.
• It turns out that the Endless Solitude was the Magius breeding ground for witches. When it was destroyed, Alina was furious summoning not one, not two but many Teresa witches to finish off Iroha and friends.
• After Sayaka interrupts Mami from attacking Iroha and Yachiyo, Mami has a mental breakdown because her conscience clashing with her brainwashing. It's not pretty. Mami then proceeds to attack Sayaka also with shots so strong she's destroying her own gun muzzles with each hammer drop. Sayaka intercepts her attack and the strain to hold back just one cannon shot tears the muscles on Sayaka arms despite her Healing Factor until her left arm ripped right off. Sayaka successfully redirects the shot, and the explosion from it causes a mushroom cloud.
• Season 1 ends with Alina staring up at the sky with a serene expression saying how much she hopes Walpurgisnacht will show up. Her calm, cheerful demeanor only adds to the horror.
• Episode Three of Season 2 is just full of this:
  • In response to Iroha’s nightmares of losing her friends (represented by a shot of them dead, particularly of Yachiyo and Tsuruno impaled by swords) and Ui (represented by of a shot of her funeral), Giovanna traps Iroha in a Lotus-Eater Machine, creating a fake Mikazuki Villa where everyone is happy, and Ui is replaced by a stuffed bear that has her hair and pyjamas. And when Kuroe confronts Iroha, Giovanna goes berserk, seizing Iroha as the illusion falls apart, leaving behind a blood red background and giant versions of the Ui bear appears to attack Kuroe and Yachiyo to keep Iroha in the dream.
    • It becomes even more horrifying when you remember that this is like what happened to Homura in Rebellion. The idealized Kamihama and the flower garden with the floating chairs? They’re essentially Giovanna’s witch labyrinth and the fake Uis are her minions. Giovanna wasn’t trying to make a better world for Iroha: She was trying to fully corrupt her.
    • Or an even worse thought that crosses over with Tearjerker. Consider how Homulilly and Giovanna acted: trying to fulfill their girl's wishes for a happier life where they get what they want, but they're still missing what they truly wanted and wished for. Homura wanted a happier life with everyone, but she became unable to fulfill her wish because Madoka didn't truly exist anymore. Iroha also wants that, but because she can't find Ui, Giovanna makes a replacement for her. Compare it to other witches, like Oktavia wanting to constantly listen to music resembling how Sayaka wanted to listen to Kyosuke play his violin, Charlotte constantly looking for cheese like Nagisa looked for love, and you'll find that the Witches aren't just corrupting their Magical Girls. They're desperately trying to grant their own wishes in their own despair.
• Episode 4 of Season 2 shows another danger of Doppels: When a Puella Magi overuses her Doppel, there is a chance she can contract Doppel Syndrome. When that happens, the Doppel goes berserk and forcibly fuses with the girl, leaving her a monstrosity that’s not that different from a Witch, with only some of her humanity remaining.

  • This is what happens to Kaede in the episode, leaving her a monstrosity made out of rotting moss and has her rib cage exposed. What’s worse, it has happened to many girls, as Mitama has an isolation ward for the ‘ill’. And there’s dozens of girls held in isolation outside of the room Kaede was put in.
  • To make things worse, look at some of the ‘ill’ girls. Three of them are girls from the game, Konomi, Natsuki and Riko (and the third of which is only a little girl).
  • This also puts Giovanna’s actions in the last episode in even worse territory, as Iroha theorizes that the ill girls are also dreaming of a better world to avoid the harsh truths of the real world and succumbed to their Doppels like she did. Iroha could had very well had contracted the syndrome herself if Yachiyo and Kuroe hadn’t saved her.

  • It's only shown in passing during episode 4 of season 2, but a screen in town shows a weather report about a typhoon moving north. The scene cuts to an orbital view of the typhoon and it is enormous, heavily implying that Walpurgisnacht is on the move. The next episode confirms that not only is she on the move, she's making a beeline for Kamihama, especially now that Touka and Nemu are luring witches in to feed Shitori Egumo.
• The HORRIFYING image of Tsuruno’s mangled body being puppeted by the Rumor of Chelation Land, along with the hideous crunching as she moves her broken form.
• Ui’s transformation into Embryo Eve: First her hair grows in length and goes wild, and then her whole body starts painfully mutating into Eve, leaving no trace of her humanity as she cries out in pain. Keep in mind that Ui is only a child, and the reason this happened was because she wanted to help Iroha.
• When Embryo Eve is finally activated, most of the Magical Girl’s Doppels go berserk, bursting out and fusing with their girls. Not even Tsuruno, Felicia and Sana are immune to this, as they quickly get Doppel Syndrome when Eve goes active.
  • Not even Rena (who remained in Mitama’s isolation ward) is safe, as she can be seen fighting against hers. Considering how she ends up on the plane where all the affected girls souls are, it’s very likely she was on the verge of succumbing to her Doppel.
• The ultimate fate of Kuroe; Her Doppel, Ichizo, had dragged her away at the end of Season 2. When Iroha finds her in the preultimate episode of the series, Ichizo had completely engulfed the girl in her mud (similar to Doppel Syndrome), and the poor girl is completely consumed in her self-loathing over becoming a Magical Girl and her past actions towards another girl she had met in the past. When Iroha tries to reason with her, telling her not to give up and to work with her, Ichizo goes berserk and shoots up skywards, actually managing to break through Alina’s barrier! Without the barrier, Kuroe’s Soul Gem quickly hatches, and her human body is torn in half into mud by Ichizo.
  • Kuroe’s final moments as a Magical Girl is both Nightmare Fuel and Tear Jerker: Her eyes gain the same muddy colour as her Soul Gem and she is at complete peace at what is about to happen, happily saying that if she becomes a witch, she can go back to who she was before she met Iroha. Whatever happened to her after Ichizo dragged her away was so bad, she saw becoming a witch as an answer to all of her problems.
    • Even worse, Kuroe only ended up like that shortly after she was taken away by Ichizo. While a Doppel/Witch is the manifestation of a girl’s darker emotions, it’s also important to remember that they’re also a corrupting influence on the girls, as shown throughout the anime. It really calls into question on whatever Kuroe’s behaviour and actions were really her own, or due to her being influenced by Ichizo.
• Giovanna’s actions at the start of the final episode: She gives Iroha a Breaking Speech, saying that now a lot of people are going to suffer because of her stopping the Magius, with more of her cloth appearing around them. The very next shot shows all the Mizasuki girls racing to Iroha, who is completely surrounded by cloth and images of Kuroe’s death, completely consumed in despair. Considering how high up Iroha was, Giovanna’s hold over her and what happened in the last episode, it’s highly likely that Giovanna would had also taken Iroha out of the barrier and would have hatched out of her Soul Gem if Yachiyo and the others hadn’t gotten to Iroha in time.
• Two words: NEO DOROTHY. Alina fuses her Doppel and herself with Embryo Eve, creating a monstrosity that shows Alina and Old Dorothy’s infection of Eve, with Dorothy’s infection infesting Eve’s wings, and Alina’s head (with the Doppel Mask) replacing Eve’s.
  • Even worse, before the fusion, Embryo Eve is shown crying while Iroha is pleading with Touka and Nemu to stop, showing that there is still traces of Ui in her. Alina didn’t just infect a Eldritch Abomination; she also infected and took control of a little girl.
  • Her ultimate plan also counts as Alina intends to make all of humanity into Magical Girls, which would had forced them to hunt for Grief Seeds or risk their Doppels going wild. Since humanity has no idea about Magical Girls, they would also have no idea about needing Grief Seeds either, so most of, if not all of humanity would had turned into monsters before they would realize what they need to do prevent the change.
  • Alina's Final Words as she allows herself to be succumbed by her Doppel showing she has completely lost whatever semblance of sanity she might have.
    Alina: Bye bye, good girls! Bye bye, Magius! BYE BYE, ALINA GRAY!