Tear Jerker / Laika: Aged Through Blood

• The game starts off with the brutal murder of Poochie, an innocent child. And according to Jacob, the birds tortured the poor kid to death, even desecrating his corpse afterwards by stringing him on his own intestines. All because he was "non-bird scum".
  • Later in the game Poochie's murderer can be tracked down, a bird nicknamed as "Captain Kidgutter". You can find him back at Where birds lurk, either to retrieve Poochie's remains or at the very least avenge him. And when you do find him, Captain Kidgutter is just a kid, barely older than Poochie. He tells you about how he was always mocked by his fellow soldiers due to his age, and how he was peer pressured into committing an act of cruelty to earn the respect of others. And while it did work, he regretted his actions so much he initially tried to at least give Poochie a decent funeral by bringing his remains to Where Our Ancestors Rest, but ended up chickening out since Laika was in that area at the time. By the time you find him, he's so wrecked by guilt he all but begs Laika to kill him.
• The curse that afflicts Laika's family grants its bearer the ability to speak to the dead, along with being able to come back from the dead. So what's the catch? Laika has lost two daughters ^note : Or maybe even five due to the curse. Once the potential bearer reaches a certain age, they fall ill, and they gain the curse if they survive. More often than not they don't. By the time Puppy was born, Laika became so numb to it that she couldn't even bring herself to get attached to her at first. And if the family's diary is any indication, this has been going on for generations.
  • One particular subquest involves Ava, one of Laika's daughters that died due to the curse. You get to control her as she tries to run back home and feebly calls out for her mother, growing weaker and weaker until she collapses onto the floor. Once Laika finds her, she's already comatose, and presumably wastes away on her bed while her mother can't do anything but watch.
• As you set the plans to destroy the Big Tree in motion, Orella at first begrudgingly accepts to help you. But with each pillar you tear down, she grows more and more reluctant, to the point where she's begging Laika to stop. Once you finally take the whole building down and kill the pope, Orella hangs herself. Not because she was a traitor, as Laika suspected, but because she couldn't live with herself after helping destroy something she considered so beautiful and venerable as the Big Tree.
• As you play the game, you learn that the bird's cruelty is not exclusive to non-birds.
  • The Undernest, one of the bird's settlements in the wasteland, is completely miserable. A rotten, filthy city overran by the poor and sick, completely neglected by their leaders.
  • Even in the mystical floating city the poor still suffer, being relegated to living in slums located in the lower parts, right next to factories and machinery. While the elite lives in comfort within Heaven, the lower castes live in perpetually cold homes thanks to the cooling systems.
  • According to the Hectist, all birds have their Syrinx^note A vocal organ located within the bird's throat removed upon being born, robbing them of their ability to sing.
• At one point Mina (the girl with the bugs) will hand you a birthday invite and ask you to deliver it to her younger brother, who's gone out into the wasteland to study insects. You find him dead Where Rust Weaves, carrying a jar filled with bugs that he intended on giving to Mina as a gift.
  Jar of Bugs item description: "Happy birthday, big sister" Fuck.