Considering the game revolves around evolving a virus with the intent to kill them all... yeah, Plague Inc. isn't the happiest game in the world.
- The premise of the game. You have to kill everyone in the entire world. Your family, your friends, your love interest, your favorite celebrities, everyone editing on TV Tropes... even you. They all have to die.
- Some plagues will let them live, but YMMV as to whether or not resetting humanity to square one by regressing to Neanderthals or being brainwashed by a worm is any improvement.
- When you start to evolve lethality, you can sometimes hear a sound clip of a woman crying. Mind you, this is after it starts killing, so she's crying over a loved one!
- There is also another sound clip that you can hear around this time where you hear someone coughs weakly before it fades out. The sound file name is called "lastbreath". Pretty self explanatory on what it means.
- When you're pretty much on the road to victory, you might get the lovely message of "The last remaining humans lie dying in holes with no chance of survival." Wow.
- Alternatively, you may get this: "The last few humans know they are watching the end of history." More existentially depressing, but either way, oof.
- When you start making zombies within the Necroa Virus, some of the news tinkers show signs of Undead Child or Parental Abandonment.
- It's subtle, but the Simian Flu's piano theme
wouldn't be out of place in its movie, which is sad enough on its own. - If you fail the "Santa's Little Helper" scenario, the Game Over screen reveals that happiness and fun will be gone forever once the Neurax Worm is extinct. Really puts it into perspective what a miserable hellhole the world had become.
- The scenario "Who Cares", while not a very popular or notable scenario (due to it simply decreasing priority of poor countries and increasing priority of rich countries, which isn't that helpful considering that poor countries weren't even the threat to begin with), is still a pretty grim and sad scenario by sheer concept. Reality TV has become so popular and distracting that the citizens of rich countries completely lose interest in helping poor countries. In the own words of the scenario's description, "who cares what happens to poor people?"
- The Cure, especially its theme music, which signifies the sheer desperation of developing a means of permanently eradicating the disease that is currently plaguing humanity. Doubled down on tearjerker if you fail, but crosses over with heartwarming if you actually succeed in saving the world, especially on higher difficulties.
