According to Asura, this is what humanity at its best looks like.
As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- The laboratories of Jack's Squad and the results of their labors. When you hear the dying demons telling you what the resident scientists did, with you turning off their life support, and when you see what they were planning to do to Jimenez and Bugaboo, you will be raging to return the favor to Jack. Which makes it doubly awesome when you do get to rip him a new one.Demon: "Give them back... My hands... My feet... Give them back to me..."
- The Tower of Mitra, too. Especially with its focus on demons not only being intelligent but conducting cruel experiments on humans to see how they tick. Some experiments include capturing and stripping humans before suffocating them, bloodletting them, and drilling in their brains, before mutating their subjects to remove supposed "weaknesses". Seeing your former comrades stuck by hooks to stone slabs and the results of the "experiment" with Norris... No wonder Zelenin wasn't quite well after that.When we dug into his skull, some grey stuff poured out and he stopped moving. Our conclusion is that humans need something called a "brain". But when you think about it... he's been reborn into a form that can no longer feel anxiety. We did a good thing! Look what a good thing we demons did!
- Zelenin's Song. And what Mastema wants to do with it.
- Seeing Zelenin blast those demons to raw, senseless data. And the screams. Jimenez's What the Hell, Hero? lecture afterwards is richly deserved.
- Then you realize how Zelenin's song affects the Earth in the Law ending. In SMT, demons, angels included, are basically thought elementals. Each demon effectively signifies a particular aggregate of thoughts. Zelenin's effect on the demons basically means the song dissolves any kind of idea other than glorifying the Great Will. Mastema and the Wise Men are trying to mindwipe the planet!
- Any path that isn't Neutral. Law? The Earth's population is converted into a mass of worshippers with absolutely no humanity left. Chaos? Earth dissolves into a barbaric anarchy unable to think of anything but getting ever stronger and stronger, thanks to Mem Aleph suffusing the whole planet and finally in a position to prevent infection by anything that could succor weakness and decay. Like sanity and calm. In a very real sense, both factions are hostile to the mind as we know it—because neither side regards there being more than one kind of good thought to have. While in either ending, the last shot you see is your Demonica telling you your mission is complete... yet you'll probably be thinking otherwise. There's a very good reason why the 3DS remake gave Law and Chaos more sympathetic "New" endings alongside Neutral so you can go these routes without making them look like bad endings.
- The crewmen in either Law or Chaos. In either path, their minds have been utterly damaged by mindless devotion to "the Lord" or the demonic bloodlust. And it's made very, very obvious it's not something you can fix... because it is exactly what you wanted.
- In the Chaos route especially, when Jimenez is about to come aboard your ship, one of your crew mates will alert you, then react with horror as your otherwise stoic hero gives them a Slasher Smile.
- It should also be noted that the forces of Chaos are what you are designed to go against. You had now pulled off the worst Et Tu, Brute? against humanity and your mission.
- The Delphinus Parasite. It induces mindless hate and murderous impulses. Why not kill it? It has absolutely no physical vectors. Eventually, it becomes resistant to the single weapon that hurts it.
- One of the parasites communicates with Zelenin... and gloats about how her crewmates on the Elve not only looked down upon her for being a woman in male-dominated company, but had sexually depraved thoughts about her.
- The various sectors represent humanity's sins in ways that punch the player in the stomach. That the endbosses of each sector call out humanity for being bastards doesn't help.
- Sector Antlia, the Scorched Nation, starts as a massive battlefield, lined with burning buildings and random planes passing in carpet bombing runs. Barbed wire is everywhere, and then you hear Morax praising Humanity's prowess as killers, saying how he's gonna mimic their style...
- Sector Bootes, the Frivolous Nation. A realm full of nauseating colors and horrible, smiling doors. The first two floors feature Sexy Silhouettes, giving off the impression of a brothel, but the subsequent floors feature corpses chained to the walls. It's Mitra's way of convicting humans for desiring pointless things. The worse part is Mitra's castle, the "Palace of Pleasure". It starts off with Sexy Silhouettes peeking through diaphanous curtains in the walls of lower levels. As you climb up, the silhouettes are replaced with Iron Maidens, silhouettes of demons holding torture devices, and metal slabs hanging from the ceiling with the chained-up (and disemboweled) corpses of fellow Strike Team members and crewmen of the Elve. Then you're captured a second time and get to see the results of those experiments...
- Sector Carina, the Squandered Nation. Laugh at the whole "shopping mall in a dimensional rift in Antarctica" thing if you must; it's a Player Punching commentary on humanity's desire to excessively spend and consume. The Apsaras at the entrance puts it best: "Please enjoy our products until the Earth runs out of resources!" Also notice that among the wares are all manner of modern weaponry—even though, going by the ABCD cycle, those embodying Carina should be well past needing weaponry for much of anything. Basically, this is Chaos insisting that no matter what, life will always be addicted to fighting (the "crime" is trying to pretend otherwise). Then we have Horkos, who plans to eat anything and everything, even everything on Earth, and calls out mankind for even being more material-hungry than he is. And if you pick the "Law" response—that humans can learn to restrain their impulse—he castigates the very idea of self-restraint as foolish and inherently impossible. He thinks the only answer is to actively and consistently destroy and abolish things that aren't actively needed. Further Fridge Horror results when you realize he isn't expecting self-restraint after he and the Schwarzwelt have finished the current round of culling the unnecessary, either. Whether he knows it or not, he's inviting a world where everyone tears at everyone else for what they want/need without any chance to rest—just the way Asura wants it, actually.
- Sector Delphinus, the Rotten Nation. It's, quite simply, a massive waste dump, with familiar things peeking out of the literal walls of trash—cars, machines, trash bags, fish skeletons, etc. The area is simply so desolate and disgusting it's hard not to remember humanity has probably done worse. The music's sombre tone only reinforces this. It's run by Asura, whose disembodied soul is the source of the aforementioned Delphinus Parasite. His goal is simple: because civilization protects the weak and limits the strong, get rid of civilization.
- At one point, Asura taunts and creeps out Zelenin by telling her about how the mostly-male crew of the Strike Team have been lusting after her, his implication being that the crew secretly wants to rape her.
- Sector Grus. Psychological Torment Zone, created by a mistress of Mind Rape. Invisible walls, fading walls, several dimensions, Demonic Spiders galore, and a random mishmash of the first four sectors, which most likely evoke the worst parts of the Schwartzwelt Expedition. Mother Maya's lair is worse- it's an impossible mess of worlds struggling in a vortex of illusions, generating the madness that is Sector Grus.
- The Game Over screen. With nothing left to stop it, the Schwarzwelt absorbs the entire Earth, leaving just a sphere of darkness. And given who incited it to begin with, it's probably much the same result as the Chaos ending... You also hear a swelling chorus of voices during the event. Whether this is is the demons or the angels crying out in awe, or every last living thing on Earth screaming as they're disintegrated, is up to you and your nightmares.
- Dent's fate if you go Law and finish all of his missions. He's content everyone else is happy. So he no longer needs to feign being equal to you. Cue a moment of horror as he starts groveling and addressing you as "master", making it clear he's just as hopelessly mad as everyone else.
- Wandering around Sector Fornax, there's a little girl in a blue dress, who's pursuing a rabbit, and asks you to please find and corner it. Say you choose to actually heed her wish, and the rabbit will become increasingly frantic as you follow him as he leaps through floor after floor. In the end, you do corner the rabbit... and the girl is standing just behind you. Let her grab the rabbit... and she'll promptly start torturing him. Surprise, surprise. It's Alice.
- The absolute worst is that brief moment while your suit scans for a hidden demon. Will it be a pushover who drops a high-Macca forma? Or will it be one of the Heralds out to gut you like a fish? Or, God forbid, a Fiend?
- Not everyone in the Law ending ends up being mindless beings stripped of their free will. The Three Wise Men mention after the defeat of Mother Maya that the weak willed shall be eliminated and only the strong willed shall be allowed to live in the new world. In other words, neither side is willing to succor the weak.
- Mem Aleph's "Empty" form. It's a deformed embryo-like thing floating in a glowing orb.
- Redux has one particularly for those who have played the original Strange Journey. You finish your beacon-launching mission, expecting to casually trot back to the Red Sprite like in the DS version...only for a new enemy, Alex, to show up, along with what seems like an Evil Counterpart of Arthur known as George, who causes your attempted communications with Arthur to turn into distorted static and break up while a very urgent warning siren plays from your DEMONICA. She engages you in battle and mops the floor of Sector Bootes with you and your demons before you can even act, and you get a nauseating first-person view of yourself keeling over in a pool of your own blood as George confirms your fading vital signs.
- A similar event happens later in Sector Carina where she corners the protagonist as they are chasing after Horkos. This time Jimenez gets to watch as Alex brutally dispatches the protagonist's demons one by one, understandably horrified. Fortunately the protagonist has the phase shift this time and manages to escape.
- The Deathtament manga has its Doomed by Canon Cruel Twist Ending. The Gigantic, against all hope and odds, successfully restores enough systems and finds the escape route out of the Womb of Grief. And then, as the surviving teammates rejoice, one of them ruefully grins and accepts that, as well as everything went... he would have liked to have saved Azazel, letting his disguise drop and revealing himself as Decarabia. Several more follow suit, showing themselves as more and more Fallen. As the Gigantic leaves the Womb of Grief, several explosions rock it in the dimensional tunnel, leaving it to crash into Bootes, killing every human on board.
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