WARNING: Spoilers Off applies to Nightmare Fuel pages!
In General
- The True Final Boss and Greater-Scope Villain, Galdera, is a God of Evil and infernal magic who has power over life and death. His physical form can be best described as a demonic beast composed of hundreds of partially digested bodies/souls, and he uses them in combat to fight you, and the second phase of the battle is a very daunting fight that can obliterate an unprepared party.
- "Stolen Dreams, Lost Light" is a very unsettling piece of music that plays in Wispermill, Riverford, Everhold and Northreach until Ophilia, Olberic, Primrose and Therion's fourth chapters are completed, respectively. It indicates that something very wrong is happening in town.
- Speaking of very unsettling pieces of music, "Pure Evil", for low piano and strings. It plays when the Travelers confront their Chapter 4 bossnote , begins with a Jaws-like motif in the cellos and basses, and indicates that the Chapter 4 bosses are among the most dangerous and immoral foes you've encountered yet.
Ophilia's Story
- The sheer lengths that the Mystery Man and Shady Figure cultists would go to to obtain Aelfric's Ember, kidnapping an innocent child and sending a threatening letter to her father, the bishop of Goldshore, trying to pressure him to take the ember from Ophilia and give it to them or, in their words, "consider your daughter's life forfeit". Things go From Bad to Worse when Ophilia overhears them talking about how they plan to kill both father and daughter whether the former gives them the ember or not. No wonder poor little Lysa was so frightened; these two are a parent's worst nightmare. The fact that their identities are never revealed adds another layer of unsettling to them.
- They are so devoted to The Savior and his goals that the surviving cultist injects himself with a deadly poison just so Ophilia won't get any more information out of him. Even Primrose is disturbed by that!Ophilia: Is something troubling you, Primrose?
Primrose: I can't wrap my head around it... Having faith so strong that you'd give up your life for it.
- They are so devoted to The Savior and his goals that the surviving cultist injects himself with a deadly poison just so Ophilia won't get any more information out of him. Even Primrose is disturbed by that!
- The town of Wispermill isn't nightmarish in the "horrifying" or "depraved" sense, but more in the "unsettling" sense. The choice of music is one thing, but when you first arrive before starting Ophilia's Chapter 4, while the shops, inn and tavern are open, literally everything else you can interact with is dead silent, as if more a living statue than anything that passes as a human being. Talking to them just gives you dots ("..."). They do not react to any Path Actions. Even Cyrus and Alfyn get nothing from Scrutinizing/Inquiring them. All of this just comes together to convey the feeling that something is just plain wrong with this town, and that this "Savior" is behind it. And then you actually start Ophilia's Chapter 4...
Cyrus's Story
- In Cyrus's second chapter, his search for the missing villagers takes him to a hidden chamber in the sewers, with blood covering the floor and a drained corpse chained to the wall. A necromancer has been kidnapping and brutally murdering innocent people to create blood crystals. And of the ten missing villagers, Cyrus can only save three.
- A smaller but still horrifying moment occurs during Cyrus's Chapter 3. After Cyrus refuses to cooperate with Yvon, Yvon threatens to leave him locked in his cellar to starve to death, casually mentioning that nobody visits his home anymore, so no one would even know what happened to him. If Therese hadn't shown up when she did, this likely would've actually happened.
Tressa's Story
- Tressa's story is relatively light-hearted, which is fitting for Tressa's curious, optimistic personality. Nevertheless, her Chapter 2 has a disturbing moment when Morlock threatens to sell Ali into slavery, or worse. Makes you wonder if he's done the same to other merchants that crossed his path, or if he'd do the same to Tressa...
- For added Fridge Horror, think about it if you haven't already completed Cyrus's second chapter. It's possible that Ali (and potentially Tressa) could be sold off to Gideon for use in his blood rituals.
Olberic's Story
- Riverford is a town run by the man responsible for the fall of Hornburg, whom Erhardt was working for as The Mole. The prospect of someone like that with so much power is unsettling on its own, but how he runs it is downright horrifying. Ruled with fear and terror, and once a month, four criminals are burned at the stake to set an example. It started off as burning the worst of the worst, but soon people who do so much as pickpocket or act suspiciously are jailed and burned for it. One NPC you can talk to says his sister is next, and she's a 9-year-old completely innocent to the fact.
Primrose's Story
- Primrose's story begins with men killing her father in front of her eyes, and her situation with Helgenish and the other dancers is horrifying—Helgenish only wants her for sex, the girls despise her pride and nobility, and when she gets an opportunity after years of tailing the Crow Men, Helgenish tortures her Only Friend and kills her before trying to kill Prim himself simply because she dared to defy him.
- In Primrose's second chapter, we find that the people of Stillsnow are not only aware of the brothel selling women to tourists, they are also keeping silent about it.
- That chapter includes a disturbing exchange between a priest and the Crow Man where the priest is implied to harbor incestuous lust for his deceased daughter.
- The main antagonist of Primrose's story arc. Simeon. The man heads the Obsidians, was the culprit behind the murder of Geoffery Azelhart, and did everything in his power to ruin the life of his childhood love... all for the purpose of his own amusement. Despite trying to kill her and showing no regard for her well-being, he's still violently smitten with her, to the point the play Primrose crashes in her hunt for him is a play about her life, ending with her character and Simeon's getting a happy ending. What the hell is up with this guy?
- During their first re-encounter—before Primrose finds out that Simeon was responsible for her father's murder—the two reminisce on Primrose's childhood before the tragedy, where present-day Simeon expresses signs that he was smitten with Primrose when she was still a pre-teen, and Simeon... was already a grown man in their flashback. While Simeon's motivation behind forming a Childhood Friend Romance with Primrose is so that any emotional pain he can inflict on her will be made that much worse, rather than sexual exploitation, his behaviour is still not unlike hebephiliac grooming. Sure enough, he turns out to be Evil All Along, and his "love" is less about caring about her and more about enjoying her suffering.
- Primrose herself can be quite scary. There's no obstacle she won't strive to overcome so that she can get back at the men who killed her family. And all the while, she carries herself with Tranquil Fury and hardly ever raises her voice, but her confrontations with Helgenish and the Crow Men make it clear that she feels intense rage towards them for what they've done. A good warning not to mess with House Azelhart.
Alfyn's Story
- In Alfyn's second chapter, Vanessa Hysel, a rival apothecary, is knowingly treating people with a tonic that is avoided by most credible medics because its principle ingredient induces symptoms very similar to whooping cough, then sells a cure for the condition she herself caused at a grossly inflated price and refuses to negotiate on it if a patient is poor. She would have killed a young girl this way if Alfyn hadn't figured out her scheme and made a treatment himself. It's implied that she has killed several people already by doing this in various towns. This one is particularly effective because it's based on a very realistic fear: the fear that a doctor could use their position of authority to fool their patients and take advantage of them.
- Alfyn's second chapter ends with a rather literal example. After using a very potent sleeping agent to keep the corrupt apothecary from trying to escape before the guards get her, if Therion is also in the party, Alfyn and Therion have a brief conversation about the effects of the sedative he used. It not only puts people to sleep almost immediately, but also manifests the target's doubts and insecurities through horrifying nightmares they suffer through for the duration of their forced sleep. Even Therion is disturbed by that! Do not piss off Alfyn!
- The encounter with Miguel in Chapter 3 can be one. Imagine that you're a fair and just doctor whose creed is that everyone deserves to be saved. Then you save someone who seemed friendly enough, but the next time you encounter him, you see him doing all sorts of crimes wholeheartedly, and he thanks you for saving him and allowing him to do more crimes, and in a way he's right, if you just bent your rule that one time and not save him, there will be less endangered lives thanks to the ensuing crime-spree. But as of now, you just become an accessory of crime. For a doctor/apothecary who's open to all patients, they may encounter someone like Miguel in real life, and when that happens, their life and philosophy can turn upside down... As with what happened with Alfyn himself. He can get past Vanessa like usual despite her perverting his arts for her own profit. But Miguel successfully broke Alfyn's philosophy that he couldn't even bring himself to drug him the same way he did to Vanessa, the drug more likely wouldn't work on a heartless person like him.
Therion's Story
- One flashback of Therion's backstory in Chapter 3, where his former friend Darius betrays him by pushing him off a cliff, so that Darius can obtain a high ranking in a criminal group for himself. This incident single-handedly caused Therion's severe distrust of anybody, and it's not hard to understand why. We know he survives, but it's dreadful to imagine Therion's fear that he could have died from such a fall.
- The city of Northreach, where many people live in fear due to the fact that it's a Wretched Hive run by brigands who constantly harass visitors and villagers alike and take their stuff. Oh, and it's ruled by Darius. Any sane person would want to stay far away from a city like this.
H'aanit's Story
- H'aanit's first chapter boss, the Ghisarma. The way it's hunched over and drooling with crazy eyes just looks... wrong.
- H'aanit realizes a tree is a monster blocking a path and challenges it to a fight. Its true form almost resembles a smaller Galdera, with several snarling humanoid bodies sprouting out of the main one. Made worse when you consider H'aanit passes no remark on it, meaning they might be normal creatures and because it perfectly blends in as a tree they might be hiding in plain sight.
- The Redeye. While little is known about it even by the Knights Ardante, H'aanit learns the consequences of carelessly engaging the thing after repelling the Lord of the Forest... in the form of a statue of Z'aanta firing an arrow into a nearby tree. Reading the arrow's attached letter shows the horror in that the statue was Z'aanta, who was petrified by the monster, and it's not the instant kind, either. You know how incurable diseases slowly eat you from the inside out until you die? This is just like that, with the victim rooted in place and unable to get help on their own. Z'aanta must have had balls of steel to compose that entire letter and fire it off before the curse finished claiming him.
- Even H'aanit is audibly frightened when she sees the statue of Z'aanta. It's the one time in the entire game that she is frightened, which is a testament to how dangerous the Redeye's powers are. Fortunately, Z'aanta's letter provides her with hope for what to do to break the curse.
- In the postgame, we learn something even worse. Redeye used to be Graham Crossford, a genuinely great man who inspired both Alfyn and Tressa to go on their journeys. Because of his bloodline, Lyblac used his wife's death to trick him into accompanying her to the Gate of Finis, where she tried to turn him into a vessel for Galdera. He finally realized what was going on during the ritual and was able to resist Lyblac's magic enough to attack her and disrupt Galdera's revival by thinking about his deceased wife and living son. He fled, but eventually succumbed to Lyblac's magic, turning into Redeye and mindlessly wandering Orsterra. You can even find his last words scratched onto a pillar somewhere in the ruins you confront him, where he laments that his moments of lucidity are getting shorter.
