Unmarked Spoilers ahead!
While the game is mostly a mish-mash of Black Comedy and Nightmare Fuel, it does have a few surprisingly sobering moments and details put into it.- While creepy, the Lamb walking to prepare to get their head cut off is very sad. When facing the player, they look like they're about to cry. When The Executioner prepares to cut their head, the Lamb starts crying while closing their eyes.
- The fact that the Lamb is the Last of His Kind. The Bishops had all their friends and family slaughtered mercilessly on the mere chance one of them might be The One Who Waits' chosen liberator.
- Near the end of the game, when the Lamb confronts the One Who Waits, he demands they return the Red Crown and sacrifice themself to him. The Lamb then faces the player in tears as the game asks the player to "Kneel to be Sacrificed". If the player selects "Accept", the Lamb responds by shaking their head as they beg you not to select "Yes" when the "Are you sure?" prompt appears. It's startlingly heartbreaking, and though it's kind of expected, it's still very effective at making you want to decide against sacrificing the Lamb.
- If the Lamb does choose to be sacrificed, it's a very tragic Bookend to the beginning of the game, where the Lamb was killed by the Bishops: The Lamb, robbed of all their companions is ordered to let themself be killed so an uncaring God can keep his position of power. Only this time, there won't be a deity waiting to revive him.
- The rituals dealing with followers' deaths. Specifically, the Funeral. You can set aside time to properly send off a dead follower and let your cult pay their respects, while the fallen follower's soul is seen rising into the sky. From there, the spot where the follower is buried will have flowers placed on it. Reading the mind of a Follower who has grieved them recently can have some melancholic reflections on the departed, as well. It's a very solemn and sobering moment amidst all the violence and Black Comedy.
- After you finish Sozo's quest the next time you see him, all you see is his corpse being consumed by the fungus he claimed to love so much not unlike how several drug addict are found dead after an overdose. Sozo was a fun quirky NPC who was helpful and pronounced the follower as his friend so seeing him dead like this is rather sad. It's also implied he wasn't always crazy and the mushrooms ruined his life.Sozo: Sozo had friends... Followers... family... now Sozo has mushrooms...
- If you meet him at the end of the mushroom statue quest and leave, then immediately turn and go back into the room, he's huddled in the floor losing it on a bad mushroom trip, and you can't interact with him at all. If you leave the mushroom area entirely from there and then go back, no matter how quickly you do it, he's already dead. He was dying in front of you and there was nothing you could do about it.
- The segments in which Bishop Shamura mind-controls your followers into turning against you, so the Lamb can know how it felt when Narinder/The One Who Waits turned against his brethren. It especially hurts when you have an attachment to the followers, and they apologize for being forced to fight you. Unless you have Omnipresence to escape with or allow them to butcher you, you have to kill the follower to progress.
- Sacrificing Ratau to the Fox can be this, as Ratau was nothing but kind and helpful to the player at the beginning of the game and merely wanted to live out the rest of his days in peace after retiring from being a cult leader.
- Even the Lamb themselves feels terrible over doing this and tries to save him, crying their eyes out. Sadly, the Fox' pull is stronger.
- In case you didn't feel horrible enough about it yet, after sacrificing Ratau you can visit his cottage. In it you find an unfinished letter from Ratau to the Lamb in which he expresses how proud he is of his young successor, how happy he is to be the Lamb's friend and that he's convinced the Lamb won't make the same mistakes he did. Ouch.
- Even even worse, if you meet up with his brother Ratoo after this, Ratoo will ask if you know Ratau, who he hasn't seen in a while, and tell you to say hi to him for him. Ouch.
- One encounter with the Bishops after you kill Leshy has Heket and Kallamar come close to begging the older Shamura for advice on how to deal with the Lamb. Shamura seemingly doesn't even know where they are and gives nothing but a few cryptic sentences. Heket, realizing that her sibling can't help them, tells Shamura to just go rest and that she and Kallamar will take care of everything.
- If Leshy is still alive during your first encounter with Heket, she is vocally bitter over the treatment she and her siblings have recieved from their wayward brother:
Heket: The Bishops... my family. Have they not suffered enough? Have I not suffered enough? We fought, pathetic vessel. We bled. We grieved. And yet the Red Crown wants more. No more. - The closest thing Narinder ever shows to doubt or regret is as a follower after the game is over, if he (perhaps unwittingly) gives you the quest to pick up Spider Silk at the Silk Cradle. In giving you the quest, he reminisces on Shamura (asking if they wept when you killed them), saying they were always the brightest of the five, with a powerful yet fluid mind that reminded him of the silk in question. And if you bring it to him, Narinder, who always has a sarcastic and often vile comment to offer, is instead completely silent.
- Forneus' backstory. She was a mother of two and loved her kittens very much, but lost them when they were sacrificed to The One Who Waits. She implies she became an Empty Shell for a long time after until she was finally able to move on and now seeks to find comfort in the beautiful and fleeting world around her.
- Even worse, said kittens are Baal and Aym, the two cats acting as The One Who Waits' attendants. In the good ending the Lamb has to kill both of them in self-defense after they attack them under their master's orders. So Forneus' children weren't truly gone before and could even have been resurrected, but thanks to the Lamb they're now Deader than Dead. Until the Relics of the Old Faith update, that is, which adds new post-game content that also allows the Lamb to resurrect both of them and reunite Forneus with her long-lost children.
- Ratoo's plight: His lover literally stole his heart and went to sea with it where the ship sank, taking them both to the bottom. Ratoo has been searching for his heart for so many years, he's forgotten what his lover looked like. The reason why he's desperate to find it is because he believes that when he does, he'll remember what she looked like. Even if you've given him the demon Hathor (which he's convinced is his lost heart), he'll still be searching the next time you see him. Seems he was wrong.
- Upon recruiting the Bishops, you have the option to give each of them a memento of their homeland (a Camellia for Leshy, a Menticide Mushroom for Heket, a Crystal Shard for Kallamar, and Spider Silk for Shamura). All of them will get homesick if you do so. Leshy thinks back on when he first found the Green Crown, before losing his temper and telling the Lamb to go away. Heket can barely speak, but manages to get out a "...you dare...", seeming to think the Lamb is rubbing it in her face. Kallamar will reminisce about how beautiful his temple used to be. And Shamura will get a few of their lost memories back.
- As of the Sins of the Flesh update, at a certain point in the game you will be able to build a Mating Tent and invite two of your followers to... spend some time together and come back out with an egg that will hatch into a new follower after a few days. However, just because you ask them to doesn't mean that they will do it. Each participant has a chance of agreeing or refusing. If both agree, they go into the tent. If both refuse, they simply walk away without incident. But if one of them agrees and the other doesn't, then the one who wanted to will break out in tears from heartbreak.
- Any time a Follower cries, whether it be from breaking up a fight, or being rejected by someone the Lamb tries to have them mate with. A genuine display of sadness from these cultists can really tug the heart strings, especially if the game gave them a high chance to breed with their partner... only to be rejected anyway.
