The aftermath of a longer and deadlier World War I ending in a stalemate left the world in total chaos and it shows.
- The darker colour-palette of Red Flood compared to the basegame or either other mod sets the mood that this is a more messed-up world than your usual Alternate History Mod. The world in Red Flood is actually much like ours, but gone completely mad.
- On a similar note, the art style used for the focuses are done in a level of realism that's unusual for HOI4. While most focuses are benign in nature (balancing budgets, clarifying military doctrines etc, electing parties.), they all look somewhat off. This goes double for the actually screwed-up focuses. Germany's "Bring Back the Death Penalty" focus for example depicts the blade of a guillotine about to be used with two skulls at the bottom.
- World War One lasted longer and was far worse in this timeline than in ours, leading to not only more deaths, but both the Entente and Central Powers committing increasingly despicable actions to achieve their victory. This eventually led to the world of madness that is the world the mod takes place in.
- A small detail, but the more frequent use of profanity in the mod's focuses and events, especially during the "Friend of Old France" event chain emphasises a Darker and Edgier world than the norm.
- The entire "Friend of Old France" event line. A small group of Frenchmen who have not gone insane are leading a partisan movement seeking to overthrow Artaud and restore sanity to their country through either liberal democracy, Marxian socialism, or French ultranationalism. At the end, it is revealed that the entire conspiracy happened mostly in Artaud's head; he himself was the Friend of Old France and was just having an episode. The story's purpose is to show that Artaud is utterly insane.
- The L'État Irréel super-event
is nothing short of Nightmare Fuel due to the sounds that come with it, taken directly from a radio play by the real Antonin Artaud called "Avoir en finir avec le jugement de Dieu".note It begins with Artaud himself ranting in French, before it completely degenerates into a nightmarish cacophony of incoherent screaming and deafening percussion. Instead of some kind of picture related to what is going on, the superevent image is nothing but an abstract painting warped enough that it seems to mess with the event window itself.- The event described in the event is also nightmarish, consisting of France declaring war on the very concept of reality, with everything in France and French society from hereon being considered to be nothing but extensions of Le Patron; a state of affairs which they apparently wish to spread to the rest of the world. Reality itself will be but a canvas, and the state once known as France will be Le Patron's brush. God knows what that means in practice.
- The Accelerationists do it again in Russia, if Aleksei Gastev is the one on top once Russia is reunited. His idea of a perfect state is one that does away with identity and even humanity so completely Russia is called the One State, and names are outright outlawed in favour of numbers, with Gastev himself taking the title of OP-01. Everything in the nation down to its very ecosystem is made into nothing but fuel for the fires of relentless industrialization, as the land that was once Russia is turned into a singular industrial complex, with every citizen merely part of an attempted Hive Mind staffing it.
- The accompanying superevent is an (originally unintentionally) chilling version of "The Internationale" played entirely on factory sirens, turning a song once celebrating the worker and the breaking of their chains into something inhuman.
- The accompanying superevent
- In this world, disaster at Gallipoli and collapse of British Raj turned the already flawed Winston Churchill into apathetic, drunken, insane Indian warlord, who uses chemical weapons to deal with all his problems.
- The event for Churchill unifying India is a painting of British soldiers massacring Indians in Jalianwala Bagh, with the music being "Rule Britannia" with sounds of gunfire and screaming in the background - suggesting that this isn't just the memory of the 1919 massacre in that park, it's now standard policy in Churchill's India.
- Should Churchill get overthrown, it can actually go From Bad to Worse if the Cult of Kali takes over. Lead by the Avatar (OTL Savitri Devi / Maximiani Julia Portas), it seeks to destroy the world. Kali Cult has Rape, Pillage, and Burn as state military policy, engages in human sacrifice and cannibalism, and forces people to serve for Avatar under the threat of anihilation. The super event for it unifying Asia shows loads of fire and smoke covering the background with a skull in the center, all set to the sounds of fire and drums with a man choking at the end.
- That's more than choking, that's his ribcage being ripped open. You get to hear first-hand EXACTLY what the Realm Of Avatar is like for its hundreds of millions of inhabitants. More than half of the world population is trapped within her literally all-consuming mania.
